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COTTON IS KING: 



CULTURE OF COTTON, AND ITS RELATION TO 



^uriciiltint, Ulaiuifattiufs anb CDuinicrtt; 



FREE COLORED PEOPLE ; AND TO THOSE WHO HOLD 
THAT SLAVERY LS IX ITSELF SINFUL 



«-2^ rt W cL CA Titti^ 



BY AN AMERICAN. 



oPYRlCy^; 






CINCINNATI: 

MOORE, W I L S T A C II , Iv E Y S & C , 

25 WEST FOURTH STREET. 

I ft 5 5 . 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by 
MOORE, WILSTACH, KEYS & CO., 

In the Clerk's office of the District Court for the Southern 
District of Ohio. 



WM. OVERKND & CO., Pkintbrs, 



PREFACE. 



In the preparation of the following pages, the 
Author has aimed at clearness of statement, rather 
than elegance of diction. He sets up no claim to 
literary distinction ; and, even if he did, every man 
of classical taste knows, that a work, abounding in 
facts and statistics, aifords little opportunity for any 
display of literary ability. 

The greatest care has been taken, by the Author, 
to secure perfect accuracy in the statistical informa- 
tion supplied and in all the facts stated. 

The authorities consulted, are Brando's Diction- 
ary of Science, Literature and Art ; Porter's Progress 
of the British Nation; McCullough's Commercial 
Dictionary; Encyclopcedia Americana ; London Econ- 
omist; De Bow's Eeview; Patent Office Eeports; 
Congressional Eeports on Commerce and Navigation ; 
Abstract of the Census Eeports, 1850 ; and Compen- 
dium of the Census Eeports. The extracts from the 



IV PREFACE. 

Debates in Congress, on the Tariff Question, are 
copied from the National Intelligencer. 

The tabular statements appended, bring together 
the principal facts, belonging to the questions exam- 
ined, in such manner, that their relations to each 
other can be seen at a glance. 

The first of these Tables, shows the date of the 
origin of Cotton Manufactories in England, and the 
amount of Cotton annually consumed, down to 1853 ; 
the origin and amount of the exports of Cotton 
from the United States to Europe ; the sources of 
England's supplies of Cotton, from countries other 
than the United States ; the dates of the discoveries 
which have promoted the production and manufac- 
ture of Cotton ; the commencement of the movements 
made to meliorate the condition of the African race ; 
and the occurrence of events that have increased the 
value of slavery and led to its extension. 

The second and third of the tables, relate to the 
exports and imports of the United States ; and illus- 
trate the relations sustained by slavery, to the other 
industrial interests and the commerce of the coun- 
try. 



CONTENTS 



Preface 3 

Introduction — Character of the Slavery controversy in the 
United States — In Great Britain — Its influence in modi- 
fying the policy of Anti-slavery men in America — Course 
of the Churches — Political Parties — Pteview of the move- 
ment in behalf of the African race, 9 



Emancipation in the United States — First Abolition Society 
organized — Progress of Emancipation — Elements of Sla- 
very expansion — Franklin's Appeal— Conditiou of Free 
Colored People — Suppression of the Slave Trade — Organ- 
ization of the American Colonization Society — Its objects 
and policy — First Emigrants — Emigrants to Hayti — 
Value of Slave labor in the South — Warfare against Colo- 
nization — Wm. Lloyd Garrison, James G. Birnej^ Gerritt 
Smith — Effect of Opposition— Exports of Cotton — Politi- 
cal action — Effect of Anti-slavery action — Fred. Dou- 
glass, 13 



VI CONTENTS. 

II. 

Present relations of American Slavery to tlie Industrial in- 
terests of the country — Present condition of Slavery — 
Manufacture of Cotton — Fusion of Interests — Census 
returns of 1850 — Products of United States — Thompson's 
predictions — Exports of Cotton — Imports — Slave labor — 
Hon. Henry Clay — Protective Tariff — Mr. Hayne of South 
Carolina — Mr. Govan — Carter — Martindale — Buchanan 
— McDuffie — Hamilton — Rankin — Garnett — Cuthbert 
— Wickliffe — Benton — Results of the contest on Protec- 
tion and Free Trade— Consumption of Cotton — Western 
Trade — Monopoly of Foreign Markets— Tripartite Alli- 
ance — Nebraska bill — Value of foreign articles in 1853-^- 
Statistics — Slavery not self-sustaining — Annexation of 
Texas — War with Mexico — Limits of the Controversy on 
Slavery 36 

III. 

Social and moral condition of the Free people of Color in the 
British colonies — In the United States — Hostility of 
Abolitionists to the Colonization cause — Sentiments of 

the Colonizationists — Canada colonization — Results ■ 

Testimony of American Missionary Association — Mis- 
sions in Jamaica — Report of the American and Foreign 
Anti-Slavery Society — Moral condition of Colored People 
in the West Indies — London Times — Gov. Wood's Testi- 
mony in regard to Kingston and Jamaica — Who are the 
friends of the Slave ? — Republic of Liberia — Testimony 
of Abolitionists in relation to the results of their own 



CONTENTS. Vll 

policy — Hon. Gerritt Sinitli — Gov. Hunt of New York — 
Logical conclusion — Important discrimination — Enlight- 
enment of the Free Colored population of the United 
States — -Disappointment of Abolitionists — -Miserable 
Subterfuge — True cause of African degradation — Jay's 
inquiry — Eifect of Colonization — American Reform 
Tract and Book Society — Tract on Colonization — Popu- 
lation of Colored People in the Sugar and Cotton States — 
Practical results of Abolition policy — Liberia, the field for 
the moral and intellectual advancement of the Colored 
man — The four great leading denominations, pledged to 
the support of its educational and religiouis institu- 
tions 130 

IV. 

Moral relations of Slavery — -Relations which the consumer 
of Slave-labor products sustains to Slavery — Great error 
of all Anti-slavery effort — Design of the Abolition move- 
ment — Law of particeps criminis — Speech of Daniel O'Con- 
nell — Malum in se doctrine — English Emancipationists — 
Commercial arg iment — Difference between the Govern- 
ments of Great Britain and the United States — Consist- 
ency of British Manufacturers — Classification of opin- 
ions in the United States, in regard to the morality of 
the institution of Slavery — World's Christian Evangeli- 
cal Alliance — The Scotchman — Effect of the adoption of 
th.e per se doctrine by ecclesiastical bodies — Denunciation 
— King Cotton — Quadruple alliance — Divine right of 
Kings — Extreme parties harmonizing — Treatment of 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

Slaves by their masters — Tribute to Cassar — Bible in 

Common Schools — Palladium of American Liberty,. .162 

Conclusion 184 

APPENDIX. 

Statistics — Growth, manufacture and influence of Cotton 
on Commerce, Slavery, Emancipation, etc., chronologi- 
cally arranged — Great Britain — Annual imports and 
consumption of Cotton, from the earliest dates to 1853 — 
United States — Annual exports of Cotton to Great 
Britain and Europe generally — Great Britain's sources 
of supplies — ^West Indies — South America — Countries 
around the Eastern part of the Mediterranean — British 
West Indies — French and Spanish Colonies — Dutch — 
Portuguese — Turkey and Smyrna — Brazil — Dates of In- 
ventions for promoting the growth and manufacture of 
Cotton — Movements for the elevation of the African race 
— Tabular statement of Agricultural products, and the 
products of Domestic Animals exported from the United 
States — Total value of products and animals raised in 
the country — Home consumption and use — Total imports 
of the more prominent Groceries for the year 18o3 — Re- 
exports — Proportion of from Slave-labor countries,. .202 



COTTON IS KING 



The controversy on Slavery in the United 
States, has been one of an exciting and com- 
plicated character. The power to emancipate 
existing, in fact, in the States separately, and 
not in the General Government, the eiforts to 
abolish it, by appeals to public opinion, have 
been fruitless, except when confined to single 
States. In Great Britain, the question was 
simple. The power to abolish Slavery in her 
West Indian colonies was vested in Parliament. 
To agitate the people of England, and call out 
a full expression of sentiment, was to control 
Parliament, and secure its abolition. The suc- 
cess of the English Abolitionists, in the employ- 
ment of moral force, had a powerful influence 
1 



10 COTTON IS KING. 

in modifying the policy of American Anti- 
slavery men. Failing to discern the difference 
in the condition of the two countries, they 
attempted to create a public sentiment through- 
out the United States, adverse to Slavery, in 
the confident expectation of speedily overthrow- 
ing: the institution. The issue taken, that 
Slavery is malum in se — a sin in itself — was 
prosecuted wdth all the zeal and eloquence they 
could command. Churches, adopting the per se 
doctrine, inquired of their converts, not whether 
they supported Slavery, by the use of its pro- 
ducts, but whether they believed the institution 
itself sinful. Could public sentiment be brought 
to assume the proper ground ; could the Slave- 
holder be convinced that the w^orld denounced 
him as equally criminal with the robber and 
murderer; then, it w^as believed, he would 
abandon the system. Political parties, sub- 
sequently organized, taught, that to vote for a 
Slaveholder, or a Pro-slavery man, was sinful, 
and could not be done without violence to con- 
science ; while, at the same time, they made no 
scruples of using the products of Slave labor- — 



COTTON IS KING. U 

the exorbitant demand for whicli was the great 
bulwark of the institution. This was a radical 
error. It laid all who adopted it open to the 
charge of practical inconsistency, and left them 
without any moral power over the consciences 
of others. As long as all used their products, 
so long the Slaveholders found the fer se doc- 
trine working them no harm ; as long as no 
provision was made for supplying the demand 
for tropical products, by free labor, so long 
there was no risk in extending the field of 
their operations. Thus, the very things neces- 
sary to the overthrow of American Slavery, 
were left undone, while those essential to its 
prosperity, were continued in the most active 
operation; so that, now, after nearly a "thirty 
years' war/' we may say, emphatically. Cotton 
IS King, and his enemies are vanquished. 

Under -these circumstances, it is due to the 
age — to the friends of humanity — to the cause 
of liberty — to the " safety of the Union " — 
that we should review the movements made in 
behalf of the African race, in our country ; so 
that errors of principle may be abandoned ; 



12 COTTON IS KING. 

mistakes in policy corrected ; incompetent lead- 
ers discharged ; tlie free colored peoj)le induced 
to change their relations to the industrial 
interests of the world ; the rights of the slave, 
as well as the master, secured ; and the prin- 
ciples of our Constitution estahlished and 
revered. We propose, therefore, to examine 
this subject, as it stands connected with the 
history of our country ; and especially to afford 
some light to the free colored man, on the true 
relations he sustains to African Slavery, and to 
the redemption of his race. The facts and 
arguments we propose to offer, will he embraced 
under the following heads : 

I. The circumstances under which the Amer- 
ican Colonization Society took its rise; the 
relations it sustained to Slavery, and to the 
schemes projected for its abolition ; the origin 
of the elements which have given to American 
Slavery its commercial value, and consequent 
powers of expansion; and the futility of the 
means used to prevent the extension of the 
institution. 

II. The present relations of American Slav- 



COTTON IS KING. 13 

ery to the Industrial interests of our own 
country ; to the demands of Commerce ; and to 
the present Political crisis. 

III. The social and moral condition of the 
free colored people in the British Colonies, and 
in the United States ; and the new field open- 
ing in Liheria, for the display of their powers. 

IV. The moral relations of persons holding 
the "per se doctrine, on the suhject of Slavery, to 
the purchase and consumption of Slave lahor 
products. 

1. Four years after the Declaration of Amer- 
ican Independence, Pennsylvania and Massa- 
chusetts had emancipated their slaves ; and, 
eight years thereafter, Connecticut and Ehode 
Island followed their example. 

Three years after the last-named event, an 
Abolition Society was organized by the citizens 
of the State of New York, with John Jay at its 
head. Two years subsequently, the Pennsyl- 
vanians did the same thing, electing Benjamin 
Fkanklin to the presidency of their association. 
The same year, too, Slavery was forever ex- 



14 COTTON IS KING. 

eluded, by Act of Congress, from the North- 
west territory. 

During the year that the New York Aboli- 
tion Society was formed, Watts, of England, 
had so far perfected the steam engine as to use 
it in propelling machinery for spinning cotton ; 
and the year the Pennsylvania Society was or- 
ganized, witnessed the invention of the Power 
Loom. The Carding Machine and the Spinning 
Jenny having been invented twenty years 
before, the Power Loom completed the ma- 
chinery necessary to the indefinite extension of 
the manufacture of cotton. 

The work of emancipation, begun by the 
four States named, continued to progress, so 
that, in seventeen years from the adoption of 
the Constitution, New Hampshire, Vermont, 
New York, and New Jersey, had also enacted 
laws, to free themselves from the burden of 
Slavery. 

As the work of manumission proceeded, the 
elements of Slavery expansion were multiplied. 
When the four States first named liberated 



COTTON IS KING. 15 

their slaves, no regular exports of cotton to 
Europe had yet commenced ; and the year New 
Hampshire set hers free, only 138,328 pounds 
of that article were shipped from the country. 
Simultaneously with the action of Vermont, in 
the year following, the Cotton Grin was invented, 
and an unparalleled impulse given to the culti- 
vation of cotton. At the same time, Louisiana, 
with her immense territory, was added to the 
Union, and room for the extension of Slavery 
vastly increased. New York lagged behind 
Vermont for six years, before taking her first 
step to free her slaves, when she found the 
exports of cotton to England had reached 
9,500,000 pounds ; and New Jersey, still more 
tardy, fell five years behind New York ; at 
which time the exports of that staple — so 
rapidly had its cultivation progressed, were 
augmented to 38,900,000 pounds. 

Four years after the emancipations, by States, 
had ceased, the Slave trade was prohibited ; but, 
as if each movement for freedom must have its 
counter-movement to stimulate Slavery, that 
same year the manufacture of cotton goods was 



16 COTTON IS KING. 

commenced in Boston. Two years after that 
event, tlie exports of cotton amounted to 93,900,- 
000 lbs. War with Great Britain, soon after- 
ward, checked both our exports and her manu- 
facture of the article; but the year 1817, 
memorable in this connection, from its being 
the date of the organization of the Colonization 
Society, found our exports augmented to 95,- 
660,000 lbs., and her consumption enlarged to 
126,240,000 lbs. Carding and spinning machin- 
ery had now reached a good degree of perfection, 
and the power-loom was brought into general 
use in England, and was also introduced into 
the United States. Steamboats, too, were com- 
ing into use, in both countries ; and great activ- 
ity prevailed in commerce, manufactures, and 
the cultivation of cotton. 

But hoAV fared it with the free colored people, 
during all this time ? We must revert to the 
days of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, to 
obtain a true answer to this question. 

With freedom to the slave, came anxieties 
among the whites as to the results. Nine years 
after Pennsylvania and Massachusetts had taken 



COTTON IS KING. 17 

the lead in tlie trial of emancipation, Feanklin 
issued an Appeal for aid to enable liis Society to 
form a plan for tlie promotion of industry, intel- 
ligence, and morality among the free blacks; 
and lie zealously urged the measure on public 
attention, as essential to their well-being, and 
indispensable to the safety of society. He 
expressed his belief, that such is the debasing 
influence of Slavery on human nature, that its 
very extirpation, if not performed with care, 
may sometimes open a source of serious evils ; 
and that so far as emancipation should be pro- 
moted by the Society, it was a duty incumbent 
on its members to instruct, to advise, to qualify 
those restored to freedom, for the exercise and 
enjoyment of civil liberty. 

How far Franklin's influence failed to pro- 
mote the humane object he had in view, may be 
inferred from the fact, that forty-seven years 
after Pennsylvania struck off" the shackles from 
her slaves, and thirty-eight after he issued his 
Appeal, one-third of the convicts in her peniten- 
tiary were colored men, while few of the other 
free States were more fortunate ; and some of 



18 COTTON IS KING. 

them even worse — one-half of New Jersey's con- 
victs heing colored men/-" 

Had the freedmen, in the Northern States, im- 
proved their privileges ; had they established a 
reputation for industry, integrity, and virtue, 
far other consequences would have followed 
their emancipation. Their advancement in 
moral character, would have put to shame the 
advocate for the perpetuation of Slavery. In- 
deed, there could have been no plausible argu- 
ment found for its continuance. No regular 
exports of cotton, no cultivation of cane sugar 
(to give a profitable character to Slave labor), 
had any existence when Jay and Franklin com- 
menced their labors, and when Congress took 
its first step for the suppression of the Slave 
trade. 

Unfortunately, the free colored people perse- 
vered in their evil habits. This not only served 
to fix their own social and political condition on 
the level of the slave, but it reacted with fearful 
effect upon their brethren remaining in bond- 
age. Their refusing to listen to the counsel of 
*See Boston Prison Discipline Society's Reports, 1826-7. 



COTTON IS KING. 19 

the pliilantliropists, who urged them to forsake 
their indolence and vice, and their frequent vio- 
lations of the laws, more than all things else, 
put a check to the tendencies, in puhlic senti- 
ment, toward general emancipation. The fail- 
ure of Franklin's plan for their elevation, 
confirmed the popular belief, that such an under- 
taking was impracticable ; and the whole Afri- 
can race, freedmen as well as slaves, were viewed 
as an intolerable burden — such as the imports 
of foreign paupers are now considered. Thus 
the free colored people themselves, ruthlessly 
threw the car of emancipation from the track, 
and tore up the rails upon which, alone, it could 
move. - 

The opinion that the African race would be- 
come a growing burden had its origin long 
before the Revolution, and led the colonists to 
oppose the introduction of slaves ; but, failing 
in this, through the opposition of England, as 
soon as they threw oflP the foreign yoke, many 
of the States at once crushed the system — among 
the first acts of sovereignty by Virginia, being 
the prohibition of the Slave trade. In the deter- 



20 COTTON IS KING. 

mination to suppress this traffic all the States 
united — but in emancipation their policy dif- 
fered. It was found easier to manage the slaves 
than the free blacks — at least it was claimed to 
be so — and, for this reason, the Slave States, 
not long after the others had completed their 
work of manumission, proceeded to enact laws pro- 
hibiting emancipations, except on condition that 
the persons liberated should be removed. The 
newly organized Free States, too, taking alarm 
at this, and dreading the influx of the free 
colored people, adopted measures to prevent the 
ingress of this proscribed and helpless race. 

These movements, so distressing to the reflect- 
ing colored man, be it remembered, were not 
the effect of the action of Colonizationists, but 
took place, mostly, long before the organization 
of the American Colonization Society; and, 
at its first annual meeting, the importance 
and humanity of colonization was strongly 
urged, on the very ground that the Slave States, 
as soon as they should find that the persons lib- 
erated could be sent to Africa, would relax 
their laws against emancipation. 



COTTON IS KING. 21 

The slow progress made by the great body of 
the free blacks in the North, or the absence, 
rather, of any evidences of improvement in in- 
dustry, intelligence, and morality, gave rise to 
the notion, that before they could be elevated to 
an equality with the whites. Slavery must be 
wholly abolished throughout the Union. The 
constant ingress of liberated slaves from the 
South, to commingle with the free colored peo- 
ple of the North, tended to perpetuate the low 
moral standard originally existing among the 
blacks ; and universal emancipation was believed 
to be indispensable to the elevation of the race. 
Those ^lio adopted this view, seem to have over- 
looked the fact, that the Africans, of savage 
origin, could not be elevated at once to an equal- 
ity with the American people, by the mere force 
of legal enactments. More than this was needed, 
for their elevation, as all are now, reluctantly, 
compelled to acknowledge. 

The Slave States adopted opinions, as to the 
negro character, opposite to those of the Free 
States, and would not risk the experiment of 
emancipation. They said, if the Free States feel 



22 COTTON IS KING. 

themselves burdened by tlie few persons, of Afri- 
can descent, they have freed, and find it imj^rac- 
ticable to educate and elevate, how much greater 
would be the evil the Slave States must bring 
upon themselves, by letting loose a population 
nearly twelve times as numerous. Such an act, 
they argued, would be suicidal — it would crush 
out all progress in civilization ; or, in the effort 
to elevate the neoTO with the Avhite man — allow- 
ing him equal freedom of action — would be to 
make the more energetic Anglo-Saxon the slave 
of the indolent African. Such a task, onerous 
in the highest degree, they could not, and would 
not undertake — such an experiment, oti their 
social system, they dared not hazard. 

Another question, *' How shall the Slave trade 
be suppressed ? began to be agitated near the 
close of the last century. The moral desolation 
existing in Africa, was without a parallel among 
the nations of the earth. When the last of our 
Northern States had freed its slaves, not a 
single Christian Church had been successfully 
established in Africa, and the Slave trade was 
still legalized to the citizens of every Christian 



COTTON IS KING. 2o 

nation. Even its subsequent prohibition, Ly the 
United States and England, had no tendency to 
check the traffic, nor ameliorate the condition of 
the African. The other European powers, hav- 
ing now the monopoly of the trade, continued 
to prosecute it with a vigor it never felt before. 
The institution of Slavery, while lessened in the 
United States, where it had not yet been made 
profitable, was rapidly acquiring an unprece- 
dented enlargement in Cuba and Brazil, where 
its profitable character had been more fully 
realized. How shall the Slave trade be anni- 
hilated. Slavery extension prevented, and Africa 
receive a Christian civilization ? were questions 
that agitated the bosom of many a philanthro- 
pist, long after WiLBERFoRCE had achieved his 
triumphs. 

At this period in the history of Africa, and of 
public sentiment on Slavery, the American 
Colonization Society was organized. It began 
its labors when the eye of the statesman, the 
philanthropist, and the Christian, could discover 
no other plan of overcoming the moral desola- 
tion, the universal oppression, of the colored 



24 COTTON IS KING. 

race, than by restoring the most enlightened of 
their number to Africa itself. Emancipation, 
by States, had been at an end for a dozen of 
years. The improvement of the free colored 
people, in the presence of the slave, was consid- 
ered impracticable. Slave labor had become so 
profitable, as to leave little ground to expect 
general emancipation, even though all other 
objections had been removed. The Slave trade 
had increased twenty-five per cent, during the 
preceding ten years. Slavery was rapidly ex- 
tending itself in the tropics, and could not be 
arrested but by the suppression of the Slave 
trade. The foothold of the Christian mission- 
ary was yet so precarious in Africa, as to 
leave it doubtful whether he could sustain his 
position. 

The Colonization of the free colored people 
in Africa, under the teachings of the Christian 
men who were prepared to accompany them, it 
was believed, would as fully meet all the con- 
ditions of the race, as was possible in the 
then existing state of the world. It would 
separate those who should emigrate from all 



COTTON IS KING. 25 

further contact with Slavery, and from its con- 
taminating influences ; it would relax the laws 
of the Slave States against emancipation, and 
lead to the more frequent liberation of slaves ; 
it would stimulate and encourage the colored 
people remaining here, to engage in efforts for 
their own elevation ; it would establish free 
republics along the coast of Africa, and drive 
away the Slave-trader ; it would prevent the 
extension of Slavery, by means of the Slave 
trade, in tropical America ; it would introduce 
civilization and Christianity among the people 
of Africa, and overturn their barbarism and 
bloody superstitions : and, if successful, it would 
react upon slavery at home, by pointing out to 
the States and General Government, a mode by 
which they might free themselves from the 
whole African race. 

The Society had thus undertaken as great an 
amount of work as it could perform. The field 
was broad enough, truly, for an association that 
hoped to obtain an income of but five to ten 
thousand dollars a year, and realized annually 
an average of only ^3,276 during the first six 



26 COTTON IS KING. 

years of its existence. It did not, therefore, 
include tlie destruction of American Slavery 
among the objects it labored to accomplish. 
That subject had been fully discussed ; the 
ablest men in the nation had labored for its 
overthrow; more than half the original States 
of the Union had emancipated their slaves ; the 
advantages of freedom to the colored man had 
been tested : the results had not been as favor- 
able as anticipated ; the public sentiment of 
the country was adverse to an increase of the 
free colored population; the few of their num- 
ber who had risen to respectability and afflu- 
ence, were too widely separated to act in concert 
in promoting measures for the general good ; 
and, until better results should follow the liber- 
ation of slaves, further emancipations, by the 
States, were not to be expected. The friends of 
the Colonization Society, therefore, while afford- 
ing every encouragement to emancipation by 
individuals, refused to agitate the question of 
the general abolition of Slavery. Nor did they 
thrust aside any other scheme of benevolence in 
behalf of the African race. Forty years had 



COTTON IS KING. 27 

elapsed from the commencement of emancipa- 
tion in the country, and thirty from the date of 
Franklin's Appeal, hefore the Society sent ofP 
its first emigrants. At that date, no extended 
plans were in existence, promising relief to the 
free colored man. A period of lethargy among 
the henevolent, had succeeded the State eman- 
cipations, as a consequence of the indifference 
of the free colored people, as a class, to their 
degraded condition. The puhlic sentiment of 
the country, therefore, was fully prepared to 
adopt Colonization as the best means, or rather, 
as the only means for accomplishing anything 
for them, or for the African race. Indeed, so 
general was the sentiment in favor of Coloni- 
zation, somewhere beyond the limits of the 
United States, that those who disliked Africa, 
commenced a scheme of emigration to Hayti, 
and proseciited it, until 8,000 free colored per- 
sons Avere removed to that island — a number 
nearly equaling the whole emigration to Li- 
beria up to 1850. Haytian emigration, how- 
ever, proved a most disastrous experiment. 
But the general acquiescence in the objects of 



28 COTTON IS KING. 

the Colonization Society did not long continue. 
The exports of cotton from the South were then 
rapidly on the increase. Slave labor had 
become profitable, and slaves, in the cotton- 
growing States, were no longer considered a 
burden. Seven years after the first emigrants 
reached Liberia, the South exported 294,310,115 
pounds of cotton ; and, the year following, the 
total cotton crop reached 325,000,000 pounds. 
But a great depression in prices'-' was now upon 
the planters, and alarmed them for their safety. 
They had decided against emancipation, and 
now to have their slaves rendered valueless, was 
an evil they were determined to avert. 

At this juncture, a warfare against Coloniza- 
tion was commenced at the South, and it was 
pronounced an Abolition scheme in disguise. 
In defending itself, the Society re-asserted its 
principles of neutrality in relation to Slavery, 
and that it had only in view the Colonization of 
the free colored people. In the heat of the 
contest, the South were reminded of their for- 

*^ See Table I. Appendix, 



COTTON IS KING. 29 

mer sentiments in relation to the whole colored 
population, and that Colonization merely pro- 
posed removing one division of a people they 
had pronounced a public burden/" 

The Emancipationists at the North had only 
lent their aid to Colonization, in the hope that 
it would prove an able auxiliary to Abolition; 
but when the Society declared its unalterable 
purpose to adhere to its original position of 
neutrality, they withdrew their support, and 

" The sentiment of the Cohonization Society, was ex- 
pressed in the following resolution, embraced in its 
Annual Report of 182(): 

" Resolved, That the Society disclaims, in the mostunquahfied terms, 
the designs attrihuted to it, of intei-fering, on the one hand, with the 
legal rights and obligations of Slavery ; and, on the other, of perpetu- 
ating its existence within the limits of the coimtry." 

On another occasion Mr. Clay, in behalf of the Society, 
defined its position thus : 

" It protested, from the commencement, and throughout all its 
progress, and it now protests, tlat it entertains no purpose, on its 
own authority, or by its own means, to attempt emancipation, partial 
or general ; that it knows the General Government has no constitu- 
tional power to achieve such an object; that it believes that the 
States, and the States only, which tolerate Slavery, can accomplish 
the work of emancipation ; and that it ought to be left to them 
exclusively, absolutely, and voluntarily, to decide the question." — 
Tenth Annual Report, p. 14, 1828. 



30 COTTON IS KING. 

commencocl hostilities against it. " The Anti- 
slavery Society/' said a distinguished Abolition- 
ist, " began with a declaration of war against 
the Colonization Society.'^- This feeling of 
hostility was greatly increased by the action of 
the Abolitionists of England. The doctrine of 
" Immediate, not Gradual Abolition,'^ was an- 
nounced by them, as their creed; and the Anti- 
slavery men of the United States adopted it as 
the basis of their action. Its success in the 
English Parliament, in procuring the passage 
of the Act for West India Emancipation, in 

1833, gave a great impulse to the Abolition 
cause in the United States. 

In 1832, Mr. Lloyd Garrison declared hos- 
tilities against the Colonization Society ; in 

1834, James G. Birney followed his example ; 
and, in 1836, Gerritt Smith also abandoned 
the cause. The North everywhere resounded 
with the cry of " Immediate Abolition /' and, in 
1837, the Abolitionists numbered 1,015 socie- 
ties ; had seventy agents under commission, 

'- Gekritt Smith, 1835. 



COTTON IS KING. 31 

and an income, for tlie year, of ^36,000."' 
The Colonization Society, on the other hand, 
was greatly embarrassed. Its income, in 1838, 
was reduced to ;S1 0,900 ; it was deeply in debt ; 
the parent Society did not send a single emi- 
grant, that year, to Liberia ; and its enemies 
pronounced it bankrupt and dead.f 

But did the Abolitionists succeed in forcing 
Emancipation upon the South, when they had 
thus rendered Colonization powerless ? Did the 
fetters fall from the slave at their bidding? 
Did fire from heaven descend, and consume the 
Slaveholder at their invocation? No such 
thing ! They had not touched the true cause of 
the extension of Slavery. They had not dis- 
covered the secret of its power ; and, therefore, 
its locks remained unshorn, its strength un- 
abated. The institution progressed as triumph- 

" Lundy's Life. 

f On the floor of an Ecclesiastical Assembly, one minis- 
ter pronounced Colonization a " dead horse ;" while another 
claimed that his "old mare was giving freedom to more 
slaves, by trotting oft" Avith them to Canada, than the 
Colonization Hociety was sending of emigrants to Liberia. 



32 COTTON IS KING. 

antly as if no opposition existed. The planters 
were progressing steadily, in securing to them- 
selves the monopoly of the cotton markets of 
Europe, and in extending the area of Slavery 
at home. In the same year that Gerritt 
Smith declared for Abolition, the title of the 
Indians to fifty-five millions of acres of land, 
in the Slave States, was extinguished, and the 
tribes removed. The year that Colonization 
was depressed to the lowest point, the exports 
of cotton, from the United States, amounted to 
595,952,207 pounds , and the consumption of 
the article in England, to 477,206,108 pounds. 
When Mr. Birney seceded from Colonization, 
he encouraged his new allies with the hope, 
that West India free labor would render our 
slave labor less profitable, and emancipation, as 
a consequence, be more easily efi'ected. How 
stood this matter six years afterward? This 
will be best understood by contrast. In 
1800, the West Indies exported 17,000,000 lbs. 
of cotton, and the United States, 17,789,803 
lbs. They were then about equally produc- 
tive in til at article. In 1840, the West India 



COTTON IS KING. 33 

exports had dwindled down to 427,529 lbs., while 
those of the United States had increased to 
743,941,061 lbs. 

And what was England doing all this while ? 
Having lost her supplies from the West Indies, 
she was quietly spinning away at American 
Slave-labor cotton ; and, to ease the public 
conscience of the kingdom, was loudly talking 
of a Free-labor supply of the commodity from 
the banks of the Niger ! But the expedition 
up that river failed, and 1845 found her manu- 
facturing 626,496,000 lbs. of cotton, mostly the 
product of American slaves ! The strength of 
American Slavery at that moment, may be in- 
ferred from the fact, that we exported, that year, 
872,905,996 lbs. of cotton, and our production 
of cane sugar had reached over 200,000,000 lbs.; 
while, to make room for Slavery extension, we 
were busied in the annexation of Texas, and in 
preparations for the consequent war with Mexico ! 

But Abolitionists themselves, some time be- 
fore this, had mostly become convinced of the 
feeble character of their efforts against Slavery, 
and allowed politicians to enlist them in a 



34 COTTON IS KIXG. 

political crusade, as the last hope of arresting 
the progress of the system. The cry of " Im- 
mediate Abolition " died away ; reliance upon 
moral means was mainly abandoned ; and the 
limitation of the institution, geographically, 
became the chief object of effort. The results 
of more than a dozen years of political action 
are before the public, and what has it accom- 
plished! We are not now concerned in the 
inquiry of how far the strategy of politicians 
succeeded in making the votes of Abolitionists 
subservient to Slavery extension. That they 
did so, in at least one prominent case, will never 
be denied by any candid man. All we intend 
to say, is, that the cotton planters, instead of 
being crippled in their operations, were able, in 
the year ending the last of June, 1853, to export 
1,111,570,370 lbs. of cotton, beside supplying 
over 400,000,000 lbs. for home consumption ; 
and that England, the year ending the last of 
January 1853, consumed the unprecedented 
quantity of 817,998,048 lbs. of that staple. The 
year 1854, instead of finding Slavery perishing 
under the blows it had received, has witnessed 



COTTON IS KING. 35 

the destruction of all the old harriers to its ex- 
tension, and heholds it expanded widely enough 
for the profitahle employment of the slave popu- 
lation, with all its natural increase, for a hundred 
years to come ! ! ■ 

If political action against Slavery has been 
thus disastrously unfortunate, how is it with 
Anti-Slavery action, at large, as to its efficiency 
at this moment ? On this point hear the testi- 
mony of a correspondent of Fredeeick Douglass' 
Paper, January 26, 1855 : 

"How gloriously did the Anti-Slavery cause 
arise '" * in 1833-4 ! And now what 
is it, in our agency ! '••■' ^ What is it 
through the errors or crimes of its advocates va- 
riously — probably quite as much as through the 
brazen, gross, and licentious wickedness of its 
enemies. Alas ! what is it but a mutilated, 
feeble, discordant and half-expiring instrument, 
at which Satan and his children, legally and 
illegally scoff! Of it I despair.'' 

Such are the crowning results of both political 
and Anti-Slavery action, for the overthrow of 
Slavery ! Such are the demonstrations of their 



36 COTTON IS KING. 

utter impotency as a means of relief to the bond 
and free of the colored race ! 

Surely, then, it is a time for work, in some 
other mode, than that hitherto adopted. Surely, 
too, it is a time for the American people to 
rebuke that class of politicians, both North and 
South, whose only capital consists in keeping up 
a fruitless warfare upon the subject of Slavery — 
fruitless, truly, to the colored man — nay ! 
abundant in fruits ; but to him, " their vine is 
of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomor- 
rah ; their grapes of gall, their clusters are bit- 
ter ; their wine is the poison of dragons, and the 
cruel venom of asps."* 

The application of this language, to the case 
under consideration, will be fully justified, when 
the facts are presented in the remaining pages 
of this work. 

2. The present relations of American Slavery 
to the Industrial interests of our own country ; 
to the demands of Commerce, and to the present 
Political crisis. 

The institution of Slavery, at this moment, 
Deuteronomy xxxii, 32, 33. 



COTTON IS KING. 3f 

gives indications of a vitality that was never 
anticipated by its friends or foes. Its enemies 
often supposed it about ready to expire, from 
the wounds they had inflicted, when in truth it 
had taken two steps in advance ; while they had 
taken twice the number in an opposite direction. 
In each successive conflict, its assailants have been 
weakened, while its dominion has been extended. 
This has arisen from causes too generally 
overlooked. Slavery is not an isolated system, 
but is so mingled with the business of the world, 
that it derives facilities from the most innocent 
transactions. Capital and labor, in Europe and 
America, are largely employed in the manufac- 
ture of cotton. These goods, to a great extent, 
may be seen freighting every vessel, from 
Christian nations, that traverses the seas of the 
globe ; and filling the warehouses and shelves 
of the merchants, over two-thirds of the world. 
By the industry, skill, and enterprise, employed 
in the manufacture of cotton, mankind are bet- 
ter clothed; their comfort better promoted; 
general industry more highly stimulated ; com- 
merce more widely extended ; and civilization 



38 COTTON IS KING. 

more rapidly advanced, than in any preceding 
age. 

To the superficial observer, all the agencies, 
based upon the manufacture and sale of cottoli, 
seem to be legitimately engaged in promoting 
human happiness ; and he, doubtless, feels like 
invoking Heaven's choicest blessings upon them. 
When he sees the stockholders in the cotton 
corporations receiving their dividends, the oper- 
atives their wages, the merchants their profits, 
and civilized people everywhere clothed comfort- 
ably in cottons, he can not refrain from explain- 
ing: "The lines have fallen unto them in 
pleasant places; yea, they have a goodly heritage!'' 

But turn a moment to the source whence the 
raw cotton, the basis of these operations, is ob- 
tained, and observe the aspect of things in that 
direction. When the statistics on the subject 
are examined, it appears that nearly all the 
cotton consumed in the Christian world, is the 
product of the Slave labor of the United States.-** 
It is this monopoly that lias given Slavery its 
commercial value ; and, while this monopoly is 
^'See Appendix, Table I. 



COTTON IS KING. 3® 

retained, tlie institution will continue to extend 
itself wherever it can find room to spread. He 
who looks for any other result, must expect that 
nations, which, for centuries, have waged war to 
extend their commerce, will now abandon their 
means of aggrandizement, and bankrupt them- 
selves, to force the abolition of American Slavery ! 
This is not all. The economical value of 
Slavery as an agency for supplying the means 
of extending manufactures and commerce, has 
long been understood by statesmen. The dis- 
covery of the power of steam, and the inventions 
in machinery, for preparing and manufacturing 
cotton, revealed the important fact, that a single 
Island, having the monopoly secured to itself, 
could supply the world with clothing. Great 
Britain attempted to gain this monopoly; and, 
to prevent other countries from rivaling her, 
she long prohibited all emigration of skillful 
mechanics from the kingdom, as well as all ex- 
ports of machinery. As country after country 
was opened to her commerce, the markets for 
her manufactures were extended, and the de- 
mand for the raw material increased. The 



40 COTTON IS KING. 

benefits of this enlarged commerce of the world, 
were not confined to a single nation, but 
mutually enjoyed by all. As each had products 
to sell, peculiar to itself, the advantages often 
gained by one, were no detriment to tlie others. 
The principal articles demanded by this increas- 
ing commerce, have been coffee, sugar, and 
cotton — in the production of which Slave labor 
has greatly predominated. Since the enlarge- 
ment of manufactures, cotton has entered more 
extensively into commerce than coffee and sugar, 
though the demand for all three has advanced 
with the greatest rapidity. England could only 
become a great commercial nation, through the 
agency of her manufactures. She was the best 
supplied, of all the nations, with the necessary 
capital, skill, labor, and fuel, to extend her com- 
merce by this means. But, for the raw material, 
to supply her manufactories, she was dependent 
upon other countries. The planters of the 
United States were the most favorably situated 
for the cultivation of cotton, and attempted to 
monopolize the markets for that staple. This led 
to a fusion of interests between them and the 



COTTON IS KING. 41 

manufacturers of Great Britain ; and to the in- 
vention of notions, in political economy, that 
would, so far as adopted, promote the interests 
of this coalition. With the advantages possessed 
hy the English manufacturers, " Free Trade'' 
would render all other nations suhservient to 
their interests ; and, so far as their operations 
should he increased, just so far would the 
demand for American cotton he extended. The 
details of the success of the parties to this com- 
hination, and the opposition they have had to 
encounter, are left to he noticed more fully here- 
after. To the cotton planters, the copartner- 
ship has heen eminently advantageous. 

How far the other agricultural interests of 
the United States are promoted, hy extending 
the cultivation of cotton, may he inferred from 
the Census returns of 1850, and the Congres- 
sional Eeports on Commerce and Navigation, 
for 1854.'" Cotton and tohacco, only, are largely 
exported. The production of sugar does not 
yet equal our consumption of the article, and 
we import, chiefly from Slave-lahor countries, 
'■' See Appendix, Table II. 



42 COTTON IS KING. 

445,445,680 lbs. to make up the deficiency."' 
But of cotton and tobacco, we export more 
than tivo-thirds of the amount produced ; while of 
other products, of the agriculturists, less than the 
one-fo7'ty-sixth part is exported. Foreign nations, 
generally, can grow their provisions, but can 
not grow their toba co and cotton. Our surplus 
provisions, not exported, go to the villages, 
towns, and cities, to feed the mechanics, manu- 
facturers, merchants, professional men, and 
others ; or to the cotton and sugar districts of 
the South, to feed the planters and their slaves. 
The increase of mechanics and manufacturers 
at the North, and the expansion of Slavery at 
the South, therefore, augment the markets for 
provisions, and promote the prosperity of the 
farmer. As the mechanical population increases, 
the implements of husbandry, and articles of 
furniture, are multiplied, so that both farmer 
and planter can be supplied with them on easier 
terms. As foreign nations open their markets 
to cotton fabrics, increased demands, for the raw 
material, are made. As new grazing and grain- 
" Table III. 



COTTON IS KING. iS 

growing States are developed, and teem with 
their surplus productions, the mechanic is bene- 
fited, and the planter, relieved from food-raising, 
can employ his slaves more extensively upon 
cotton. It is thus that our exports are increased ; 
our foreign commerce advanced; the home mar- 
kets of the mechanic and farmer extended, and 
the wealth of the nation promoted. It is thus, 
also, that the Free labor of the country finds 
remunerating markets for its products — though 
at the expense of serving as an efficient auxil- 
iary in the extension of Slavery ! 

But more. So speedily are new grain-growing 
States springing up ; so vast is the territory 
owned by the United States, ready for settle- 
ment ; and so enormous will soon be the amount 
of products demanding profitable markets, that 
the national 2:overnment has been seekino^ new 
outlets for them, upon our own continent, to 
which, alone, they can be advantageously trans- 
ported. That such outlets, when our vast 
possessions. Westward, are brought under culti- 
vation, will be an imperious necessity, is known 
to every statesman. The farmers of these new 



44 COTTON IS KING. 

States, after the example of those of the older 
sections of the country, will demand a market for 
their products. This can be furnished, only, by 
the extension of Slavery ; by the acquisition of 
more tropical territory ; by opening the ports 
of Brazil, and other South American countries, 
to the admission of our provisions ; or by a vast 
enlargement of domestic manufactures, to the 
exclusion of foreign goods from the country. 
Look at this question as it now stands, and then 
judge of what it must be twenty years hence. 
The class of products under consideration, in the 
whole country, in 1853, were valued at ^1,551,- 
176,490; of which there were exported to for- 
eign countries, to the value of only ^33,809,- 
126.'''' The planter will not assent to any check 
upon the foreign imports of the country, for the 
benefit of the farmer. This demands the adop- 
tion of vigorous measures to secure a market 
for his products by some of the other modes 
stated. Hence, the orders of our Executive, in 
1851, for the exploration of the valley of the 
Amazon; the efforts, in 1854, to obtain a treaty 
'-'See Appendix, Table II. 



COTTON IS KING. 45 

with Brazil for tlie free navigation of that im- 
mense river; the negotiations for a military 
foothold in St. Domingo, and the determination 
to acquire Cuba. But we must not anticipate topics 
to be considered at a later point in our discussion. 
Antecedent to all these movements, Great 
Britain had foreseen the coming increased de- 
mand for tropical products. Indeed, her West 
Indian policy, of a few years previous, had hast- 
ened the crisis ; and, to repair her injuries, and 
meet the general outcry for cotton, she made 
the most vigorous efforts to promote its cultiva- 
tion in her own tropical possessions. The motives 
prompting her to this policy, need not be refer- 
red to here, as they will be noticed hereafter. 
The Hon. George Thompson, it will be remem- 
bered, when urging the increase of cotton culti- 
vation in the East Indies, declared that the 
scheme must succeed, and that, soon, all Slave- 
labor cotton would be repudiated by the British 
manufacturers. Mr. Garrison indorsed the 
measure, and expressed his belief that, with its 
success, the American Slave system must inevi- 
tably perish, from starvation ! But England's 



46 COTTON IS KING. 

efforts signally failed, and the golden apple, 
fully ripened, dropped into the lap of our cotton 
planters. The year that heard Thompson's 
pompous predictions,'-'' witnessed the consump- 
tion of but 445,744,000 lbs. of cotton, by Eng- 
land, while, fourteen years later, she used 
817,998,048 lbs., nearly 700,000,000 lbs. of 
which were obtained from America ! 

That we have not overstated her dependence 
upon our Slave labor for cotton, is a fact of 
world-wide notoriety. Blackwood's Magazine, 
January, 1853, in referring to the cultivation 
of the article, by the United States, says : 

"With its increased growth has sprung up 
that mercantile navy, which now waves its 
stripes and stars over every sea, and that 
foreign influence, which has placed the internal 
peace — we may say the subsistence of millions, 
in every manufacturing country in Europe — 
within the power of an oligarchy of planters." 

In reference to the same subject, the London 
Economist quotes as follows : 

" Let any great social or physical convulsion 

— — _ 



COTTON IS KING. 47 

visit the United States, and England would feel 
the shock from Land's End to John O'Groats. 
The lives of nearly two millions of our country- 
men are dependent upon the cotton crops of 
America ; their destiny may be said, without 
any kind of hyperbole, to hang upon a thread. 
Should any dire calamity befall the land of 
cotton, a thousand of our merchant ships would 
rot idly in dock ; ten thousand mills must 
stop their busy looms ; two thousand thousand 
mouths would starve, for lack of food to feed 
them.'' 

A more definite statement of England's 
indebtedness to cotton, is given by McCuL- 
LOUGH ; who shows, that as far back as 1832, 
her exports of cotton fabrics were equal in 
value to about two-thirds of all the woven 
fabrics exported from the empire. The same 
state of things, nearly, existed in 1840, when 
the cotton fabrics exported were valued at 
about $140,000,000, while all the other woven 
fabrics exported did not quite reach to the value 
of $68,000,000.- 

'•* London Economist, 1850. 



48 ' COTTON IS KING. 

There was a time when American Slave labor 
sustained no such relations to the manufactures 
and commerce of the world as it now so firmly 
holds ; and when, by the adoption of proper 
measures, on the part of the Free colored people 
and their friends, the emancipation of the 
slaves, in all the States, might have been 
effected. But that period has passed forever 
away, and causes, unforeseen, have come into 
operation, which are too powerful to be over- 
come by any agencies that have since been 
employed. What Divine Providence may have 
in store for the future, we know not ; but, at 
present, the institution of Slavery is sustained 
by numberless pillars, too massive for human 
power and wisdom to overthrow. 

Take another view of this subject. To say 
nothing now of the tobacco, rice, and sugar, 
which are the products of our slave labor, we 
exported raw cotton to the value of ^109,456,404 
in 1853. Its destination was, to Great Britain, 
768,596,498 lbs. ; to the Continent of Europe, 
335,271,434 lbs. ; to countries on our own Con- 
tinent, 7,702,438 lbs. ; making the total ex- 



COTTON IS KING. 49 

ports, 1,111,570,370 lbs. The entire crop of 
that year being 1,600,000,000 lbs., gives, for 
borne consumption, 488,429,630 lbs. Of this, 
there was manufactured into cotton fabrics to 
the value of ^61,869,274;* of which there was 
retained, for home markets, to the value of 
gl5 3, 100,290. Our imports of cotton fabrics 
from Europe, in 1853, for consumption, amount- 
ed in value to ;j(26,477,950: thus making our 
cottons, foreign and domestic, for that year, 
cost us ^79,578,240. 

This, now, is what becomes of our cotton; 
this is the way in which it so largely constitutes 
the basis of commerce and trade ; and this is 
the nature of the relations existing between 
the Slavery of the United States and the 
material interests of the world. 

But have the United States no other great 
leading interests, except those which are in- 
volved in the production of cotton? Certainly, 

" This estimate is probably too low, being taken from 
the census of 1850. The exports of cottons for 1850 were, 
$4,734,424, and for 1853, $8,768,894; having nearly 
doubled in four years. 

4 



50 COTTON IS KING. 

they have. Here is a great field for the 
growth of provisions. In ordinary years, exclu- 
sive of tobacco and cotton, our agricultural 
property, when added to the domestic animals 
and their products, amounts in value to 
^1,551,176,490. Of this, there is exported 
only to the value of ;g33,809,126 ; which leaves 
for home consumption and use, a remainder to 
the value of $1,517,367,364.- The portions of 
the property represented by this immense sum 
of money, which pass from the hands of the 
agriculturists, are distributed throughout the 
Union, for the support of the day-laborers, 
sailors, mechanics, manufacturers, traders, mer- 
chants, professional men, planters, and the 
slave population. This is what becomes of the 
provisions. 

Beside this annual consumption of provisions, 
most of which is the product of free labor, the 
people of the United States use a vast amount 
of groceries, which are mainly of Slave labor 
origin. Boundless as is the influence of cotton, 

'- See Table II, Appendix. 



COTTON IS KING. Bl 

in stimulating Slavery extension, that of the 
cultivation of groceries falls but little short of 
it ; the chief difference being, that they do not 
receive such an increased value under the hand 
of manufacturers. The cultivation of coffee, in 
Brazil, employs as great a number of slaves as 
that of cotton in the United States. 

But, to comprehend fully our indebtedness to 
slave labor for groceries, we must descend to 
particulars. Our imports of coffee, tobacco, 
sugar, and molasses, for 1853, amounted in 
value to g!38,479,000; of which the hand of the 
slave, in Brazil and Cuba mainly, supplied to 
the value of $34,451,000.- This shows the 
extent to which we are sustaining foreign Slav- 
ery, by the consumption of these four products. 
But this is not our whole indebtedness to 
Slavery for groceries. Of the domestic grown 
tobacco, valued at $19,975,000, of which we 
retain nearly one-half, the Slave States produce 
to the value of $16,787,000; of domestic rice, 
the product of the South, we consume to the 

" See Table III, Appendix. 



52 COTTON IS KING. 

value of ^7,092,000 ; of domestic Slave grown 
sugar and molasses, we take, for home consump- 
tion, to the value of §34,779,000 ; making our 
grocery account with domestic Slavery, foot up 
the sum of §50,449, 000. Our whole indebted- 
ness, then, to Slavery, foreign and domestic, for 
these four commodities, after deducting two 
millions of re-exports, amounts to §82,607,000. 

By adding the value of the foreign and 
domestic cotton fabrics, consumed annually in 
the United States, to the yearly cost of the 
groceries which the country uses, our total 
indebtedness, for articles of Slave labor origin, 
will be found swelling up to the enormous sum 
of §162,185,240. 

We have now seen the channels through 
which our cotton passes off into the great sea of 
commerce, to furnish the world its clothing. 
We have seen the origin and value of our 
^provisions, and to whom they are sold. We 
have seen the sources whence our groceries are 
derived, and the millions of money they cost. 
To ascertain how far these several interests are 
sustained by one another, will be to determine 



COTTON IS KING. 53 

how far any one of them hecomes an element of 
expansion to the others. To decide a question 
of this nature, with precision, is impracticable. 
The statistics are not attainable. It may be 
illustrated, however, in various ways, so as to 
obtain a conclusion proximately accurate. Sup- 
pose, for example, that the supplies of food 
from the North were cut off, the manufactories 
left in their present condition, and the planters 
forced to raise their provisions and draught 
animals: in such circumstances, the export of 
cotton must cease, as the lands of these States 
could not be made to yield more than would 
subsist their own population, and supply the 
cotton demanded by the Northern States. Now, 
if this be true of the agricultural resources of 
the cotton States — and it is believed to be the 
full extent of their capacity — then the surplus 
of cotton, to the value of more than a hundred 
millions of dollars, now annually sent abroad, 
stands as the representative of the yearly sup- 
plies which the cotton planters receive from the 
farmers north of the cotton line. This, there- 
fore, as will afterward more fully appear, may 



o4 COTTON IS KING. 

be taken as the probable extent to which the 
supplies from the North serve as an element of 
Slavery expansion, in the article of cotton alone. 

But this subject demands a still closer scru- 
tiny, as to its past connections with national 
politics, in order that the causes of the failure 
of Abolitionism to arrest the progress of Slav- 
ery, as well as the present relations of the 
institution to the politics of the country, may 
fully appear. 

Slave labor has seldom been made profitable 
where it has been wholly employed in grazing 
and grain growing ; but it becomes remunera- 
tive in proportion as the planters can devote 
their attention to cotton, sugar, rice, or tobacco. 
To render Southern Slavery profitable in the 
highest degree, therefore, the slaves must be 
employed upon some one of these articles, and 
be sustained by a supply of food and draught 
animals from Northern agriculturists ; and, 
before the planter's supplies are complete, to 
these must be added cotton gins, implements of 
husbandry, furniture, and tools, from Northern 



COTTON IS KING. §§ 

mechanics. This is a point of the utmost 
moment, and must be considered more at 
length. 

It has long been a vital question to the suc- 
cess of the Slaveholder, to know how he could 
render the labor of his slaves the most profitable. 
The grain growing States had to emancipate 
their slaves, to rid themselves of a profitless 
system. The cotton growing States, ever after 
the invention of the cotton gin, had found the 
production of that staple, highly remunerative. 
The logical conclusion, from these different 
results, was, that the less provisions, and the 
more cotton grown by the planter, the greater 
would be his profits. Markets for the surplus 
products of the farmer of the North, were 
equally as important to him as the supply of 
provisions was to the planter. But the planter, 
to be eminently successful, must purchase his 
supplies, at the lowest possible prices ; while 
the farmer, to secure his prosperity, must sell 
his products at the highest possible rates. Few, 
indeed, can be so ill informed, as not to know. 



56 COTTON IS KING. 

that these two topics, for many years, were 
involved in the " Free Trade " and " Protective 
Tariff" doctrines, and afforded the materiel of 
the political contests between the North and the 
South — between free labor and slave labor. 
A very brief notice of the history of that 
controversy, will demonstrate the truth of this 
assertion. 

The attempt of the agricultural States, thirty 
years since, to establish the protective policy, 
and promote '* Domestic Manufactures,'' was a 
struggle to create such a division of labor, as 
would afford a " Home Market " for their pro- 
ducts, no longer in demand abroad. The first 
decisive action on the question, by Congress, 
was in 1824; when the distress in these States, 
and the measures proposed for their relief, by 
national legislation, were discussed on the pas- 
sage of the ''Tariff Bill" of that year. The 
ablest men in the nation were engaged in the 
controversy. As provisions are the most impor- 
tant item on the one hand, and cotton on the 
other, we shall use these two terms as the 



COTTON IS KING. 5»7 

representatives of the two classes of products, 
belonging, respectively, to Free labor and to 
Slave labor. 

Mr. Clay, in tbe course of the debate, said: 
" What, again, I would ask, is the cause of the 
unhappy condition of our country, which I have 
fairly depicted ? It is to be found in the fact 
that, during almost the whole existence of 
this government, we have shaped our industry, 
our navigation, and our commerce, in reference 
to an extraordinary war in Europe, and to for- 
eign markets which no longer exist ; in the fact 
that we have depended too much on foreign 
sources of supply, and excited too little the 
native ; in the fact that, while we have culti- 
vated, with assiduous care, our foreign resources, 
we have suffered those at home to wither, in a 
state of neglect and abandonment. The conse- 
quence of the termination of the war of Europe, 
has been the resumption of European commerce, 
European navigation, and the extension of Euro- 
pean agriculture, in all its branches. Europe, 
therefore, has no longer occasion for anything 

like the same extent as that which she had 
5 



58 COTTON IS KING. 

during her wars, for American commerce, Amer- 
ican navigation, the produce of American indus- 
try. Europe in commotion, and convulsed 
throughout all her memhers, is to America no 
longer the same Europe as she is now, tranquil, 
and watching with the most vigilant attention, 
all her own peculiar interests, without regard to 
their operation on us. The efi'ect of this altered 
state of Europe upon us, has heen to circum- 
scribe the employment of our marine, and 
greatly to reduce the value of the produce of 
our territorial labor. '■" * The greatest want 
of civilized society is a market for the sale and 
exchange of the surplus of the products of the 
labor of its members. This market may exist 
at home or abroad, or both, but it must exist 
somewhere, if society prospers ; and, wherever 
it does exist, it should be competent to the ab- 
sorption of the entire surplus production. It is 
most desirable that there should be both a home 
and a foreign market. But with respect to their 
relative superiority, I can not entertain a doubt. 
The home market is first in order, and para- 
mount in importance. The object of the bill 



COTTON IS KING. 5i 

under consideration, is to create this home mar- 
ket, and to lay the foundations of a genuine 
American policy. It is opposed; and it is in- 
cumbent on the partisans of the foreign policy 
(terms which I shall use without any invidious 
intent) to demonstrate that the foreign market 
is an adequate vent for the surplus produce of 
our labor. But is it so? 1. Foreign nations 
can not, if they would, take our surplus produce. 
* =;> 2. If they could, they would not. * * 
We have seen, I think, the causes of the distress 
of the country. We have seen that an exclusive 
dependence upon the foreign market must lead 
to a still severer distress, to impoverishment, to 
ruin. We must, then, change somewhat our 
course. We must give a new direction to some 
portion of our industry. We must speedily 
adopt a genuine American policy. Still cherish- 
ing a foreign market, let us create also a home 
market, to give further scope to the consump- 
tion of the produce of American industry. Let 
us counteract the policy of foreigners, and 
withdraw the support which we now give to 
their industry, and stimulate that of our own 



60 COTTON IS KING. 

country. ^ * The creation of a home market 
is not only necessary to procure for our agricul- 
ture a just reward of its labors, but it is indis- 
pensable to obtain a supply of our necessary 
wants. If we can not sell, we can not buy. 
That portion of our population (and we have 
seen that it is not less than four-fifths) which 
makes comparatively nothing that foreigners 
will buy, has nothing to make purchases with 
from foreigners. It is in vain that we are told 
of the amount of our exports, supplied by the 
planting interest. They may enable the plant- 
ing interest to supply all its wants; but they 
bring no ability to the interests not planting, 
unless, which can not be pretwided, the plant- 
ing interest was an adequate vent for the 
surplus produce of all the labor of all other 
interests. ^ ^ But this home market, highly 
desirable as it is, can only be created and cher- 
ished by the protection of our own legislation 
against the inevitable prostration of our industry, 
which must ensue from the action of foreign 
policy and legislation. '•' The sole object 

of the tariff is to tax the produce of foreign 



COTTON IS KING. il 

industry, with tlie view of promoting American 
industry. ^ ^ But it is said by the lionoraUe 
gentleman from Virginia, that the South, owing 
to the character of a certain portion of its popu- 
lation, can not engage in the business of manu- 
facturino:. * ^ The circumstances of its 
degradation unfits it for the manufacturing 
arts. The well-being of the other, and the 
larger part of our population, requires the intro- 
duction of those arts. 

'' What is to be done in this conflict ? The 
gentleman would have us abstain from adopting 
a policy called for by the interests of the greater 
and freer part of the population. But is that 
reasonable ? Can it be expected that the inter- 
ests of the greater part should be made to bend 
to the condition of the servile part of our popu- 
lation ? That, in effect, would be to make us 
the slaves of slaves. ^ * I am sure that the 
patriotism of the South may be exclusively relied 
upon to reject a policy which should be dictated 
by considerations altogether connected with that 
degraded class, to the prejudice of the residue 
of our population. But, does not a perseverance 



62 COTTON IS KING. 

in the foreign policy, as it now exists, in fact, 
make all parts of the Union, not planting, tribu- 
tary to the planting parts ? What is the argu- 
ment ? It is, that we must continue freely to 
receive the produce of foreign industry without 
regard to the protection of American industry, 
that a market may he retained for the sale 
abroad of the produce of the planting portion 
of the country ; and that, if we lessen the con- 
sumption, in all parts of America, those which 
are not planting, as well as the planting sec- 
tions, of foreign manufactures, we diminish to 
that extent the foreign market for the planting 
produce. The existing state of things, indeed, 
presents a sort of tacit compact between the 
cotton-grower and the British manufacturer, 
the stipulations of which are, on the part 
of the cotton-grower, that the whole of the 
United States, the other portions as well as 
the cotton-growing, shall remain open and 
unrestricted in the consumption of British man- 
ufactures ; and, on the part of the British 
manufacturer, that, in consideration thereof, he 
will continue to purchase the cotton of the South. 



COTTON IS KING. 63 

Thus, then, wo perceive, that the proposed meas- 
ure, instead of sacrificing the South to the other 
parts of the Union, seeks only to preserve them 
from being absolutely sacrificed under the opera- 
tion of the tacit compact which I have described/' 
The opposition to the Protective tariff', by 
the South, arose from two causes — the first 
openly avowed at the time, and the second 
clearly deducible from the policy it pursued: 
the one to secure the foreign market for its cot- 
ton, the other to obtain a bountiful supply of 
Provisions at cheap rates. Cotton was admitted 
free of duty into foreign countries, and Southern 
statesmen feared its exclusion, if our govern- 
ment increased the duties on foreign fabrics. 
The South exported about twice as much of that 
staple, as was supplied to Europe by all other 
countries, and there were indications favoring 
the desire it entertained of monopolizing the 
foreign markets. The AVest India planters could 
not import food, but at such high rates as to 
make it impracticable to grow cotton at prices 
low enouo;h to suit the Eno-lish manufacturer. 
To purchase cotton cheaply, was essential to the 



64 COTTON IS KING. 

success of his sclieme of monopolizing its manu- 
facture, and supplying the world with clothing. 
The close proximity of the provision and cotton- 
growing districts, in the United States, gave its 
planters advantages over all other portions of 
the world. But they could not monopolize the 
markets, unless they could obtain a cheap supply 
of food and clothing for their negroes, and raise 
their cotton at such reduced prices as to under- 
sell their rivals. A manufacturing population, 
with its mechanical coadjutors, in the midst of 
the provision growers, on a scale such as the 
Protective policy contemplated, it was conceived, 
would create a permanent market for their pro- 
ducts, and enhance the price ; whereas, if this 
manufacturing could be prevented, and a system 
of free trade adopted, the South would constitute 
the principal Provision market of the country, and 
the fertile lands of the North supply the cheap 
food demanded for its slaves. As the tariff policy, 
in the outset, contemplated the encouragement 
of the production of iron, hemp, whisky, and the 
establishment of woolen manufactories, princi- 
pally, the South found its interests but slightly 



COTTON IS KING. 6® 

identified with the system — the coarser qualities 
of cottons, only, being manufactured in the 
country, and, even these, on a diminished scale, 
as compared with the cotton crops of the South. 
Cotton, up to the date when this controversy 
had fairly commenced, had been worth, in the 
English market, an average price of from 29 7-10 
to 48 4-10 cents per lb.'-'-= But at this period a 
wide-spread and ruinous depression, both in the 
culture and manufacture of the article, occur- 
red — cotton in 1826, having fallen, in England, 
as low as 11 9-10 to 18 9-10 cents per lb. The 
home market, then, was too inconsiderable to be 
of much importance, and there existed little 
hope of its enlargement to the extent demanded 
by its increasing cultivation. The planters, 
therefore, looked abroad to the existing mar- 
kets, rather than to wait for tardily creating 
one at home. For success in the foreign mar- 
kets, they relied, mainly, upon preparing them- 
selves to produce cotton at the reduced prices 
then prevailing in Europe. All agricultural 

"This includes the period from 1806, to 1826, though the 
decline began a few years before the later date. 



6Q COTTON IS KING. 

products, except cotton, being excluded from 
foreign markets, the planters found themselves 
almost the sole exporters of the country ; and it 
was to them a source of chagrin, that the North 
did not, at once, co-operate with them in aug- 
menting the commerce of the nation. 

At this point in the history of the contro- 
versy, politicians found it an easy matter to 
produce feelings of the deepest hostility be- 
tween the opposing parties. The planters were 
led to believe that the millions of revenue 
collected off the goods imported, was so much 
deducted from the value of the cotton that 
paid for them, either in the diminished price 
they received abroad, or in the increased price 
which they paid for the imported articles. To 
enhance the duties, for the protection of our 
manufactures, they were persuaded, would be 
so much of an additional tax upon themselves, 
for the benefit of the North ; and, beside, to 
give the manufacturer such a monopoly of the 
home market for his fabrics, would enable him 
to charge purchasers an excess over the true 
value of his stuffs, to the whole amount of the 



COTTON IS KING. 67 

duty. By the protective policy, tlie planters 
expected to have the cost of both provisions and 
clothing increased, and their ability to mono- 
polize the foreign markets diminished in a 
corresponding degree. If they could establish 
Free trade, it would insure the American mar- 
ket to foreign manufacturers ; secure the foreign 
markets for their leading staple ; repress home 
manufactures ; force a larger number of the 
Northern men into agriculture ; multiply the 
growth, and diminish the price of provisions ; 
feed and clothe their slaves at lower rates ; 
produce their cotton for a third or fourth of 
former prices ; rival all other countries in its 
cultivation ; monopolize the trade in the article 
throughout the whole of Europe ; and build up 
a commerce and a navy that would make us the 
ruler of the seas. 

But, to understand the sentiments of the 
South, on the Protective policy, as expressed by 
its statesmen, we must agam quote from the 
Congressional Debates of 1824 : 

Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, said: ''But 
how, I would seriously ask, is it possible for 



6a COTTON IS KING. 

the home market to supply the place of the 
foreign market, for our cotton? We supply- 
Great Britain with the raw material, out of 
which she furnishes the Continent of Europe, 
nay, the whole world, with cotton goods. Now, 
suppose our manufactories could make every 
yard of cloth we consume, that would furnish a 
home market for more than 20,000,000 lbs. out 
of the 180,000,000 lbs. of cotton now shipped 
to Great Britain; leaving on our hands 160,- 
000,000 lbs., equal to two-thirds of our whole 
produce. * ^ ^ * ^ ^ Considering this 
scheme of promoting certain employments, at 
the expense of others, as unequal, oppressive, 
and unjust — viewing prohibition as the means, 
and the destruction of all foreign commerce as 
the end of this policy — I take this occasion to 
declare, that we shall feel ourselves justified in 
embracing the very first opportunity of repeal- 
ing all such laws as may be passed for the 
promotion of these objects." 

Mr. Carter, of South Carolina, said: "An- 
other danger to which the present measure 
would expose this country, and one in which 



COTTON IS KING. 69 

the Southern States have a deep and vital 
interest, would be the risk we incur, by this 
system of exclusion, of driving Great Britain 
to countervailing measures, and inducing all 
other countries, with whom the United States 
have any considerable trading connections, to 
resort to measures of retaliation. There are 
countries possessing vast capacities for the pro- 
duction of rice, of cotton, and of tobacco, to 
which England might resort to supply herself. 
She might apply herself to Brazil, Bengal, and 
Egypt, for her cotton ; to South America, as 
well as to her colonies, for her tobacco ; and to 
China and Turkey for her rice.'^ 

Mr. Go VAN, of South Carolina, said : " The 
effect of this measure on the cotton, rice, and 
tobacco growing States, will be pernicious in 
the extreme: — it will exclude them from those 
markets where they depended almost entirely 
for a sale of those articles, and force Great 
Britain to encourage the cottons, (Brazil, Eio 
Janeiro, and Buenos Ayres,) which, in a short 
time, can be brought in competition with us. 
Nothing but the consumption of British goods 



70 COTTON IS KING. 

in this country, received in exchange, can sup- 
port a command of the cotton market to the 
Southern planter. It is one thing very certain, 
she will not come here with her gold and silver 
to trade with us. And should Great Britain, 
pursuing the principles of her reciprocal duty 
act, of last June, lay three or four cents on our 
cotton, where would, I ask, be our surplus of 
cotton? It is well known that the United 
States can not manufacture one-fourth of the 
cotton that is in it; and should we, by our 
imprudent legislative enactments, in pursuing 
to such an extent this restrictive system, force 
Great Britain to shut her ports against us, it 
will paralyze the whole trade of the Southern 
country. This export trade, which composes 
five-sixths of the export trade of the United 
States, will be swept entirely from the ocean, 
and leave but a melancholy wreck behind.'^ 

It is necessary, also, to add a few additional 
extracts, from the speeches of Northern states- 
men, during this discussion. 

Mr. Martindale, of New York, said : '' Does 
not the agriculture of the country languish, 



COTTON IS KING. ^ 71 

and the laborer stand still, because, beyond tbe 
supply of food for liis own family, his produce 
perishes on his hands, or his fields lie waste and 
fallow ; and this because his accustomed market 
is closed against him ? It does, sir. ^ * ^ 
A twenty years' war in Europe, which drew 
into its vortex all its various nations, made our 
merchants the carriers of a large portion of the 
world, and our farmers the feeders of immense 
belligerent armies. An unexampled activity 
and increase in our commerce followed — our 
agriculture extended itself, grew, and flourished. 
An unprecedented demand gave the farmer an 
extraordinary price for his produce. * * '"- 
Imports kept pace with exports, and consump- 
tion with both. * ^ '•'-' Peace came into 
Europe, and shut out our exports, and found us 
in war with England, which almost cut off our 
imports. * ^ * Now we felt how comfort- 
able it w^as to have plenty of food, but no 
clothing. * '" * Now we felt the imperfect 
organization of our system. Now we saw the 
imperfect distribution and classification of labor. 



72 COTTON IS KING. 

o i> o Here is the explanation of our oppo- 
site views. It is employment, after all, that 
we are all in search of. It is a market for our 
lahor and our produce, which we all want, and 
all contend for. ' Buy foreign goods, that we 
may import,' say the merchants : it will make 
a market for importations, and find employment 
for our ships. Buy English manufactures, say 
the cotton planters ; England will take our 
cotton in exchange. Thus the merchant and 
the cotton planter fully appreciate the value of 
a market when they find their own encroached 
upon. The farmer and manufacturer claim to 
participate in the henefits of a market for their 
labor and produce ; and hence this protracted 
debate and struggle of contending interests. 
It is a contest for a market between the cctton 
grower and merchant on one side, and the 
farmer and manufacturer on the other. That 
the manufacturer would furnish this market to 
the farmer, admits no doubt. The farmer 
should reciprocate the favor; and government 
is now called upon to render this market acces- 



COTTON IS KING. 73 

sible to foreign fabrics for the mutual benefit 
of both. * * * This, then, is the remedy 
we propose, sir, for the evils which we suffer. 
Place the mechanic by the side of the farmer, 
that the manufacturer who makes our cloth, 
should make it from our farmers^ wool, flax, 
hemp, etc., and be fed by our farmers' provi- 
sions. Draw forth our iron from our own 
mountains, and we shall not drain our coun- 
try in the purchase of the foreign. * * '"' 
We propose, sir, to supply our own wants 
from our own resources, by the means which 
God and Nature have placed in our hands. 
o o * ;Bu^ \\qyq is a question of sectional 
interest, which elicits unfriendly feelings and 
determined hostility to the bill. ^^ * * The 
cotton, rice, tobacco, and indigo growers of the 
Southern States, claim to be deeply affected 
and injured by this system. * * "' Let us 
inquire if the Southern planter does not 
demand what, in fact, he denies to others. 
And now, what does he require? That the 
North and West should buy — what ? Not 
their cotton, tobacco, etc., for that we do 



74 COTTON IS KING. 

already, to tlie utmost of our ability to con- 
sume, or pay, or vend to others ; and that is to 
an immense amount, greatly exceeding what 
they purchase of us. But they insist that we 
should buy English wool, wrought into cloth, 
that they may pay for it with their cotton ; 
that we should buy Eussia iron, that they may 
sell their cotton ; that we should buy Holland 
gin and linen, that they may sell their tobacco. 
In fine, that we should not grow wool ; and dig 
and smelt iron of the country; for, if we did, 
they could not sell their cotton.'^ [On another 
occasion, he said] : " Gentlemen say they will 
oppose every part of the Bill. They will, there- 
fore, move to strike out every part of it. And, 
on every such motion, we shall hear repeated, 
as we have done already, the same objections: 
that it will ruin trade and commerce ; that it 
will destroy the revenue, and prostrate the 
navy ; that it will enhance the prices of articles 
of the first necessity, and thus be taxing the 
poor ; and that it will destroy the cotton mar- 
ket, and stop the further grmvth of cotton.^ ^ 

Mr. Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, said: ''No 



COTTON IS KING. 75 

nation can be perfectly independent, which 
depends upon foreign countries for its supply of 
iron. It is an article equally necessary in 
peace and in war. Without a plentiful supply 
of it, we can not provide for the common 
defense. Can we so soon have forgotten the 
lesson which experience taught us during the 
late war with Great Britain? Our foreign 
supply was then cut off, and we could not 
manufacture in sufficient quantities for the 
increased domestic demand. The price of the 
article became extravagant, and both the Gov- 
ernment and the agriculturist were compelled 
to pay double the sum for which they might 
have purchased it, had its manufacture, before 
that period, been encouraged by proper protect- 
ing duties." 

Sugar cane, at that period, had become an 
article of culture in Louisiana, and efforts were 
made to persuade her planters into the adoption 
of the Free trade system. It was urged that 
they could more effectually resist foreign com- 
petition, and extend their business, by a cheap 
supply of food, than by protective duties. But 



76 COTTON IS KING. 

the Louisianians were too wise not to know, 
that though they would certainly obtain cheap 
provisions by the destruction of Northern manu- 
factures ; still, this would not enable them to 
compete with the cheaper labor supplied by the 
Slave-trade to the Cubans. 

The West, for many years, gave its undivided 
support to the manufacturing interests, thereby 
obtaining a heavy duty on hemp, wool, and 
foreign distilled spirits: thus securing encour- 
agement to its hemp and wool growers, and the 
monopoly of the home market for its whisky. 
The distiller and the manufacturer, under this 
system, were equally ranked as public benefac- 
tors, as each increased the consumption of the 
surplus products of the farmer. The grain of 
the West could find no remunerative market, 
except as fed to domestic animals, for droving 
East and South, or distilled into whisky, which 
would bear transportation. Take a fact in 
proof of this assertion. Hon. Henry Baldwin, 
of Pittsburgh, at a public dinner given him by 
the friends of General Jackson, in Cincinnati, 
May, 1828. in referring to the want of markets, 



COTTON IS KING. 77 

for the farmers of the West, said, " He was 
certain, the aggregate of their agricultural 
produce, finding a market in Europe, would not 
pay for the pins and needles they imported. '^ 

The markets in the Southwest, now so im- 
portant, were then quite limited. As the 
Protective system, coupled with the contem- 
plated internal improvements, if successfully 
accomplished, would inevitably tend to enhance 
the price of agricultural products ; while the 
Free trade and anti-internal improvement policy, 
would as certainly reduce their value ; the two 
systems were long considered so antagonistic, 
that the success of the one must sound the 
knell of the other. Indeed, so fully was Ohio 
impressed with the necessity of promoting 
manufactures, that all capital, thus employed, 
was for many years entirely exempt from tax- 
ation. 

It was in vain that the friends of protection 
appealed to the fact, that the duties levied on 
foreign goods did not necessarily enhance their 
cost to the consumer ; that the competition 
among home manufacturers, and between them 



78 COTTON IS KING. 

and foreigners, had greatly reduced tlie price 
of nearly every article properly protected ; that 
foreign manufacturers always had, and always 
would advance their prices according to our 
dependence upon them ; that domestic competi- 
tion was the only safety the country had against 
foreign imposition; that it was necessary we 
should become our own manufacturers, in a 
fair degree, to render ourselves independent of 
other nations in times of war, as well as to 
guard against the vacillations in foreign legis- 
lation ; that the South would be vastly the 
gainer by having the market for its products at 
its own doors, to avoid the cost of their transit 
across the Atlantic; that, in the event of the 
repression or want of proper extension of our 
manufactures, by the adoption of the free trade 
system, the imports of foreign goods, to meet 
the public wants, Avould soon exceed the ability 
of the people to pay, and, inevitably, involve 
the country in bankruptcy. 

Southern politicians remained inflexible, and 
refused to accept any policy except free trade, 
to the utter abandonment of the principle of 



COTTON IS KING. 79 

protection. Whether they were jealous of the 
greater prosperity of the North, and desirous 
to cripple its energies, or whether they were 
truly fearful of bankrupting the South, we 
shall not wait to inquire. Justice demands, 
however, that we should state, that the South 
was suffering from the stagnation in the cotton 
trade existing throughout Europe. The plant- 
ers had been unused to the low prices, for that 
staple, they were compelled to accept. They 
had no prospect of an adequate home market 
for many years to come, and there were indica- 
tions that they might lose the one they already 
possessed. The West Indies was still Slave 
territory, and attempting to recover its early 
position in the English market. This it had to 
do, or be forced into emancipation. The power- 
ful Viceroy of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, was endeav- 
oring to compel his subjects to grow cotton on 
an enlarged scale. The newly organized South 
American republics were assuming an aspect of 
commercial consequence, and might commence 
its cultivation. The East Indies and Brazil 
were supplying to Great Britain from one-third 



80 COTTON IS KING. 

to one-half of the cotton she was annually 
manufacturing. The other half, or two-thirds, 
she might obtain from other sources, and repu- 
diate all traffic with our planters. Southern 
men, therefore, could not conceive of anything 
but ruin to themselves, by any considerable 
advance in duties on foreign imports. They 
understood the protective policy as contem- 
plating the supply of our country with home 
manufactured articles, to the exclusion of those 
of foreign countries. This would confine the 
planters in the sale of their cotton, mainly to 
the American market, and leave them in the 
power of moneyed corporations ; which, possess- 
ing the ability, might control the prices of their 
staple, to the irreparable injury of the South. 
With Slave labor they could not become manu- 
facturers, and must, therefore, remain at the 
mercy of the North, both as to food and 
clothing, unless the European markets should 
be retained. Out of this conviction grew the 
war upon Corporations ; the hostility to the 
employment of foreign capital in developing 
the mineral, agricultural, and manufacturing 



COTTON IS KING. 81 

resources of the country; the efforts to destroy 
the banks and the credit system ; the attempts 
to reduce the currency to gold and silver ; the 
system of collecting the public revenues in 
coin ; the withdrawal of the public moneys from 
all banks, as a basis of paper circulation ; and 
the sleepless vigilance of the South, in resisting 
all systems of internal improvements by the 
General Government. Its statesmen foresaw, 
that a paper currency would keep up the price 
of Northern products one or two hundred per 
cent, above the specie standard ; that combina- 
tions of capitalists, whether engaged in manu- 
facturing wool, cotton, or iron, would draw off 
labor from the cultivation of the soil, and cause 
large bodies of the producers to become con- 
sumers; and that roads and canals, connecting 
the West with the East, were effectual means 
of bringing the agricultural and manufacturing 
classes into closer proximity, to the serious 
limitation of the foreign commerce of the 
country, the checking of the growth of the 
navy, and the manifest injury of the planters. 
This tariff and free trade controversy was 



82 COTTON IS KING. 

far from what it is now imagined to have been. 
People, on both sides, w^ere often in great 
straits to know hoAv to obtain a livelihood, much 
less to amass fortunes. The word ruin was no 
unmeaning phrase to the people of that day. 
The news, now, that a bank has failed, carries 
with it, to the depositors and holders of its 
notes, no stronger feelings of consternation, 
than did the report of the passage or repeal of 
tariff" laws, then affect the minds of the opposing 
parties. We have spoken of the peculiar con- 
dition of the South in this respect. In the 
West, for many years, the farmers often 
received no more than twenty-jive cents, and 
rarely over forty cents per bushel for their 
wheat, after conveying it, on horseback, or in 
wagons, not unfrequently a distance of fifty 
miles, to find a market. Other products were 
proportionally low in price ; and such was the 
difficulty in obtaining money, that people could 
not pay their taxes but with the greatest sacri- 
fices. So deeply were the people interested in 
these questions of national policy, that they 
became the basis of political action during 



COTTON IS KING. 83 

several Presidential elections. This led to 
mucli vacillation in legislation on the subject, 
and gave alternately, to one and then to the 
other section of the Union, the benefits of its 
favorite policy. 

The vote of the West, during this struggle, 
was of the first importance, as it possessed the 
balance of power, and could turn the scale at 
will. It was not left without inducements to 
co-operate with the South, in its measures for 
extending slavery, that it might create a mar- 
ket among the planters for its products. This 
appears from the particular efforts made by the 
Southern members of Congress, during the 
debate of 1824, to win over the West to the doc- 
trines of Free trade. 

Mr. McDuFFiE, of South Carolina, said : '* I 
admit that the Western people are embarrassed, 
but I deny that they are distressed, in any other 
sense of the word. * * I am well assured 
that the permanent prosperity of the West de- 
pends more upon the improvement of the means 
of transporting their produce to market, and of 
receiving the returns, than upon every other 



84 COTTON IS KING. 

subject to whicli the legislation of this govern- 
ment can be directed. * * Gentlemen (from 
the West) are aware that a very profitable trade 
is carried on by their constituents with the 
Southern country, in live stock of all descriptions, 
which they drive over the mountains and sell 
for cash. This extensive trade, which, from its 
peculiar character, more easily overcomes the 
difficulties of transportation than any that can 
be substituted in its place, is about to be put in 
jeopardy for the conjectural benefits of this meas- 
ure. When I say this trade is about to be put 
in jeopardy, I do not speak unadvisedly. I am 
perfectly convinced that, if this bill passes, it 
will have the effect of inducing the people of 
the South, partly from the feeling and partly 
from the necessity growing out of it, to raise 
within themselves, the live stock which they 
now purchase from the West. ^^ If we 

cease to take the manufactures of Great Britain, 
she will assuredly cease to take our cotton to 
the same extent. It is a settled principle of her 
policy — a principle not only wise, but essential 
to her existence — to purchase from those nations 



COWON IS KING. 85 

that receive her manufactures, in preference to 
those who do not. You have, heretofore, heen 
her best customers, and therefore, it has been 
her policy to purchase our cotton to the full 
extent of our demand for her manufactures. 
But, say gentlemen, Great Britain does not 
purchase your cotton from affection, but from 
interest. I grant it, sir ; and that is the very 
reason of my decided hostility to a system which 
will make it her interest to purchase from other 
countries in preference to our own. It is her 
interest to purchase cotton, even at a higher 
price, from those countries which receive her 
manufactures in exchange. It is better for her 
to give a little more for cotton, than to obtain 
nothing for her manufactures. It will be 
remarked that the situation of Great Britain is, 
in this respect, widely different from that of the 
United States. The powers of her soil have 
been already pushed very nearly to the maxi- 
mum of their productiveness. The productive- 
ness of her manufactures, on the contrary, is as 
unlimited as the demand of the whole world. 
^'' * In fact, sir, the policy of Great Britain is 



86 COTTON IS KING. 

not, as gentlemen seem to suppose, to secure the 
home, but the foreign market for her manu- 
factures. The former she has without an effort. 
It is to attain the latter, that all her policy and 
enterprise are brought into requisition. The 
manufactures of that country are the basis of her 
commerce; our manufactures, on the contrary, 
are to be the destruction of our cominerce. * * 
It can not be doubted, that, in pursuance of the 
policy of forcing her manufactures into foreign 
markets, she will, if deprived of a large portion 
of our custom, direct all her efforts to South 
America. That country abounds in a soil admi- 
rably adapted to the production of cotton, and 
will, for a century to come, import her manu- 
factures from foreign countries." 

Mr. Hamilton, of South Carolina, said : '' That 
the planters in his section shared in that depres- 
sion which is common to every department of 
the industry of the Union, excepting those from 
which we have heard the most clamor for relief 
This would be understood when it was known 
that sea-island cotton had fallen from 50 or 60 
cents, to 25 cents — a fall even greater than that 



COTTON IS KING. 87 

whicli lias attended wheat, of which we had 
heard so much — as if the grain-growing section 
was the only agricultural interest which had 
suffered. * * While the planters of this 
region do not dread competition in the foreign 
markets on equal terms, from the superiority of 
their cotton, they entertain a well-founded appre- 
hension, that the restrictions contemplated will 
lead to retaliatory duties on the part of Great 
Britain, which must end in ruin. '•'' "' In 
relation to our upland cottons, Great Britain 
may, without difficulty, in the course of a very 
short period, supply her wants from Brazil. '" '•'' 
How long the exclusive production, even of the 
sea-island cotton, will remain to our country, is 
yet a doubtful and interesting problem. The 
experiments that are making on the Delta of 
the Nile, if pushed to the Ocean, may result in 
the production of this beautiful staple, in an 
abundance which, in reference to other produc- 
tions, has long blest and consecrated Egyptian 
fertility. * * We are told by the honorable 
Speaker (Mr. Clay), that our manufacturing 
establishments will, in a very short period, 



88 COTTON IS KING. 

supply the place of the foreign demand. The 
futility, I will not say mockery of this hope, may 
be measured by one or two facts. First, the 
present consumption of cotton, by our manufac- 
tories, is about equal to one-sixth of our whole 
production. * ■•" How long it will take to 
increase these manufactories to a scale equal to 
the consumption of this production, he could not 
venture to determine ; but that it will be some 
years after the epitaph will have been written 
on the fortunes of the South, there can be little 
doubt.'' * ^ [After speaking of the tendency 
of increased manufactures in the East, to check 
emigration to the West, and thus to diminish 
the value of the public lands and prevent the 
growth of the Western States, Mr. H. proceeded 
thus:] " That portion of the Union could par- 
ticipate in no part of the bill, except in its bur- 
dens, in spite of the fallacious hopes that were 
cherished, in reference to cotton-bagging for 
Kentucky, and the woolen duty for Steubenville, 
Ohio. He feared that to the entire region of 
the West, no ' cordial drops of comfort ' would 
come, even in the duty on foreign spirits. To a 



COTTON IS KING. 89 

large portion of our people, who are in the habit 
of solacing themselves with Hollands, Antigua, 
and Cogniac, whisky, would still have ' a most 
villainous twang.' The cup, he feared, would 
be refused, though tendered by the hand of 
patriotism as well as conviviality. No, the 
West has but one interest, and that is, that its 
best customer, the South, should be prosperous.'^ 
Mr. Eankin, of Mississippi, said : " With the 
West, it appears to me like a rebellion of the 
members against the body. It is true, we export, 
but the amount received from those exports is 
only apparently, largely in our favor, inasmuch 
as we are the consumers of your produce, depend- 
ent on you for our implements of husbandry, 
the means of sustaining life, and almost every- 
thing except our lands and negroes ; all of which 
draws much from the apparent profits and ad- 
vantages. In proportion as you diminish our 
exportations, you diminish our means of pur- 
chasing from you, and destroy your own market. 
You will compel us to use those advantages of 
soil and of climate which God and Nature have 
placed within our reach, and to live, as to you, 



90 COTTON IS KING. 

as you desire us to live as to foreign nations — 
dependent on our own resources." 

Mr. Garnett, of Virginia, said: ''The West- 
ern States can not manufacture. The want of 
capital (of which they, as well as the Southern 
States, have heen drained hy the policy of gov- 
ernment), and other causes, render it impossible. 
The Southern States are destined to suffer more 
by this policy than any other — the Western 
next; hut it will not benefit the aggregate 
population of any State. It is for the benefit of 
capitalists only. If persisted in, it will drive 
the South to ruin or resistance.'' 

Mr. CuTHBERT, of Georgia, said : " He hoped 
the market for the cotton of the South was not 
about to be contracted within a little miserable 
sphere, the [home market], instead of being 
spread throughout the world. If they should 
drive the cotton-growers from the only source 
from whence their means were derived [the for- 
eign market], they would be unable to take any 
longer their supplies from the West^ — they must 
contract their concerns within their own spheres, 
and begin to raise fiesh and grain for their own 



COTTON IS KING. 91 

consumption. The South was already under a 
severe pressure — if this measure went into effect, 
its distress would be consummated." 

In 1828, the West found still very limited 
means of communication with the East. The 
opening of the New York canal, in 1825, created 
a means of traffic with the seaboard, to the peo- 
ple of the Lake region ; but all of the remain- 
ing territory, west of the Alleghanies, had gained 
no advantages over those it had enjoyed in 1824, 
except so far as steamboat navigation had pro- 
gressed on the Western rivers. In the debate 
preceding the passage of the tariff of 1828, 
usually termed the '' Woolens' Bill,'' allusion is 
made to the condition of the West, from which 
we quote as follows : 

Mr. WiCKLiFFE, of Kentucky, said : " My 
constituents may be said to be a grain-growing 
people. They raise stock, and their surplus 
grain is converted into spirits. Where, I ask, 
is our market? * * Our market is where 
our sympathies should be, in the South. Our 
course of trade, for all heavy articles, is down 
the Mississippi. What breadstuffs we find a 



92 COTTON IS KING. 

market for, are principally consumed in tlie 
States of Mississippi, Louisiana, South Alabama, 
and Florida. Indeed, I may say, these States 
are the consumers, at miserable and ruinous 
prices to the farmers in my State, of our exports 
of spirits, corn, flour, and cured provisions. '•' * 
We have had a trade of some value to the South 
in our stock. We still continue it under great 
disadvantages. It is a ready-money trade — I 
might say it is the only money trade in which 
we are engaged. ^ * Are gentlemen ac- 
quainted with the extent of that trade ? It may 
be fairly stated at three millions per annum." 

Mr. Benton, urged the Western members to 
unite with the South, '' for the purpose of enlarg- 
ing the market, increasing the demand in the 
South and its ability to purchase the horses, 
mules, and provisions, which the West could sell 
nowhere else.'^ 

The tariff' of 1828, created great dissatisfac- 
tion at the South. Examples of the expressions 
of public sentiment, on the subject, adopted at 
conventions, and on other occasions, might be 
multiplied indefinitely. Take a case or two, to 



COTTON IS KING. 93 

illustrate the whole. At a public meeting in 
Georgia, held subsequently to the passage of 
the " Woolens' Bill," the following resolution 
was adopted: 

Resolved, That to retaliate as far as possible upon 
our oppressors, our Legislature be requested to im- 
pose taxes, amounting to prohibition, on the hogs, 
horses, mules, and cotton-bagging, whisky, pork, beef, 
bacon, flax, and hemp cloth, of the Western, and on 
all the productions and manufactures of the Eastern 
and Northern States." 

Mr. Hamilton, of South Carolina, in a speech 
at the Waterborough Dinner, given subsequently 
to the passage of the tariff of 1828, said: " It 
becomes us to inquire what is to be our situation 
under this unexpected and disastrous conjunc- 
ture of circumstances, which, in its progress, will 
deprive us of the benefits of a free trade with 
the rest of the world, which formed one of the 
leading objects of the Union. Why, gentlemen, 
ruin, unmitigated ruin, must be our portion, if 
this system continues. '••^ '-•" From 181 6 down 
to the present time, the South has been drugged, 
by the slow poison of the miserable empiricism 



94 COTTON IS KING. 

of the prohibitory system, the fatal effects of 
which we could not so long have resisted, but 
for the stupendously valuable staples with which 
God has blessed us, and the agricultural skill 
and enterprise of our people. ^^ 

The opening of the year 1832, found the 
parties to this controversy once more engaged 
in earnest debate, on the floor of Congress ; and 
midsummer witnessed the passage of a new 
Tariff Bill, including the principle of Protec- 
tion. Its enactment led to the movements in 
South Carolina toward secession; and, to avert 
the threatened evil, the Bill was modified, in 
the following year, so as to make it acceptable 
to the South ; and, so as, also, to settle the 
policy of the Government for the succeeding 
nine years. A few extracts from the debates of 
1832, will serve to show what were the senti- 
ments of the members of Congress, as to the 
effects of the protective policy on the different 
sections of the Union, up to that date : 

Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, said : " When 
the policy of '24 went into operation, the South 
was supplied from the West, through a single 



COTTON IS KING. 95 

avenue, (the Saluda Mountain Gap,) with live 
stock, horses, cattle, and hogs, to the amount of 
considerahly upward of a million of dollars a 
year. Under the pressure of the system, this 
trade has heen regularly diminishing. It has 
already fallen more than one-half * ^^ ^ 
In consequence of the dire calamities which 
the system has inflicted on the South — Wasting 
our commerce, and withering our prosperity — 
the West has heen very nearly deprived of her 
hest customer. '•' * And what was found 
to be the result of four years' experience at 
the South ? Not a hope fulfilled ; not one 
promise performed; and our condition infinitely 
worse than it had been four years before. Sir, 
the whole South rose up as one man, and 
protested against any farther experiment with 
this system. * ^ Sir, I seize the oppor- 
tunity to dispel forever the delusion that the 
South can derive any compensation, in a home 
market, for the injurious operations of the 
protective system. * '•' What a spectacle 
do you even now exhibit to the world ? A 
large portion of your fellow citizens, believing 



96 COTTON IS KING. 

themselves to be grievously oppressed, by an 
unwise and unconstitutional system, are clamor- 
ing at your doors for justice; while another 
portion, supposing that they are enjoying rich 
bounties under it, are treating their complaints 
with scorn and contempt. ^ '•' This sys- 
tem may destroy the South, but it will not 
permanently advance the prosperity of the 
North. It may depress us, but can not elevate 
them. Beside, sir, if persevered in, it must 
annihilate that portion of the country from 
which the resources are to be drawn. And it 
may be well for gentlemen to reflect, whether 
adhering to this policy would not be acting 
like the man who ' killed the goose which laid 
the golden eggs.' Next to the Christian 
religion, I consider Free Trade, in its largest 
sense, as the greatest blessing that can be 
conferred on any people." 

Mr. McDuFFiE, of South Carolina, said : " At 
the close of the late war with Great Britain, 
everything in the political and commercial 
changes resulting from the general peace, indi- 
cated unparalleled prosperity to the Southern 



V 



COTTON IS KING. 97 

States, and great embarrassment and distress 
to those of the North. The nations of the 
Continent had all directed their efforts to the 
business of manufacturing ; and all Europe may 
be said to have converted their swords into 
machinery, creating unprecedented demands for 
cotton, the great staple of the Southern States. 
There is nothing in the history of commerce 
that can be compared with the increased 
demand for this staple, notwithstanding the 
restrictions by which this Government has 
limited that demand. As cotton, tobacco, and 
rice are produced only on a small portion of 
the globe, while all other agricultural staples 
are common to every region of the earth, this 
circumstance gave the planting States very 
great advantages. To cap the climax of the 
eommercial advantages opened to the cotton 
planters, England, their great and most valued 
customer, received their cotton under a mere 
nominal duty. On the other hand, the pros- 
pects of the Northern States were as dismal as 
those of the Southern States were brilliant. 

They had lost the carrying trade of the world, 

8 



98 COTTON IS KING. 

wliich the wars of Europe had thrown into 
their hands. They had lost the demand and the 
high prices which our own war had created for 
their grain and other productions ; and, soon 
afterward, they also lost the foreign market for 
their grain, owing, partly, to foreign corn laws, 
but still more to other causes. Such were the 
prospects, and such the well founded hope of 
the Southern States at the close of the late 
war, in which they bore so glorious a part in 
vindicating the freedom of trade. But where 
are now these cheering prospects and animating 
hopes? Blasted, sir — utterly blasted — by the 
consuming and withering course of a system of 
legislation which wages an exterminating war 
against the blessings of commerce and the 
bounties of a merciful Providence ; and which, 
by an impious perversion of language, is called 
"Protection." * " I will now add, sir, 

my deep and deliberate conviction, in the face 
of all the miserable cant and hypocrisy with 
which the world abounds on the subject, that 
any course of measures which shall hasten the 
abolition of Slavery, by destroying the value of 



COTTON IS KING. 99 

Slave labor, will bring upon the Southern 
States the greatest political calamity with 
which they can' be afflicted ; for I sincerely 
believe, that when the people of those States 
shall be compelled, by such means, to emanci- 
pate their Slaves, they will be but a few 
degrees above the condition of slaves them- 
selves. Yes, sir, mark what I say: when the 
people of the South cease to be masters, by the 
tampering influence of this Government, direct 
or indirect, they will assuredly be slaves. It is 
the clear and distinct perception of the irresist- 
ible tendency of this protective system to 
precipitate us upon this great moral and 
political catastrophe, that has animated me to 
raise my warning voice, that my fellow citizens 
may foresee, and, foreseeing, avoid the destiny 
that would otherwise befall them. '" '■•= * 
And here, sir, it is as curious as it is melan- 
choly and distressing, to see how striking is 
the analogy between the Colonial vassalage to 
which the manufacturing States have reduced 
the planting States, and that which formerly 
bound the An fflo- American Colonies to the 



100 COTTON IS KING. 

British Empire. * ^ England said to 

her American Colonies, You shall not trade 
with the rest of the world for such manufac- 
tures as are produced in the mother country. 
The manufacturing States say to their Southern 
Colonies, You shall not trade with the rest of 
the world for such manufactures as ive produce^ 
under a penalty of forty per cent, upon the 
value of every cargo detected in this illicit 
commerce ; which penalty, aforesaid, shall be 
levied, collected, and paid, out of the products 
of your industry, to nourish and sustain ours." 

Mr. Clay, in referring to the condition of 
the country at large, said : "I have now to 
perform the more pleasing task of exhibiting 
an imperfect sketch of the existing state of 
the unparalleled prosperity of the country. 
On a general survey, we behold cultivation 
extended ; the arts flourishing ; the face of the 
country improved ; our people fully and profit- 
ably employed, and the public countenance 
exhibiting tranquillity, contentment, and happi- 
ness. And, if we descend into particulars, we 
have the agreeable contemplation of a people 



COTTON IS KING. 101 

out of debt ; land rising slowly in value, but in 
a secure and salutary degree ; a ready, though 
not an extravagant market for all the surj^lus 
productions of our industry ; innumerable 
flocks and herds browsing and gamboling on 
ten thousand hills and plains, covered with rich 
and verdant grasses ; our cities expanded, and 
whole villages springing up, as it were, by 
enchantment ; our exports and imports increased 
and increasing ; our tonnage, foreign and coast- 
wise, swelled and fully occupied; the rivers of 
our interior animated by the perpetual thunder 
and lightning of countless steam-boats ; the 
currency sound and abundant ; the public debt 
of two wars nearly redeemed ; and, to crown 
all, the public treasury overflowing, embarrass- 
ing Congress, not to find subjects of taxation, 
but to select the objects w^hich shall be liberated 
from the impost. If the term of seven years 
were to be selected, of the greatest prosperity 
which this people have enjoyed since the estab- 
lishment of their present Constitution, it would 
be exactly that period of seven years which 



102 COTTON IS KING. 

immediately followed the passage of the tariff 
of 1824. 

" This transformation of the condition of the 
country from gloom and distress to brightness 
and prosperity, has been mainly the work of 
American legislation, fostering American indus- 
try, instead of allowing it to be controlled by 
foreign legislation, cherishing foreign industry. 
The foes of the American system, in 1824, 
with great boldness and confidence, predicted, 
first, the ruin of the public revenue, and the 
creation of a necessity to resort to direct taxa- 
tion. The gentleman from South Carolina, 
(General Hayne,) I believe, thought that the 
tariff of 1824 would operate a reduction of 
revenue to the laro-e amount of eio^ht millions 
of dollars ; secondly, the destruction of our 
navigation ; thirdly, the desolation of commer- 
cial cities ; and, fourthly, the augmentation of 
the price of articles of consumption, and further 
decline in that of the articles of our exports. 
Every prediction which they made has failed — 
utterly failed. * "' It is now proposed to 



COTTON IS KING. 103 

abolish the system to which we owe so much of 
the public prosperity. * * Why, sir, there 
is scarcely an interest — scarcely a vocation in 
society — which is not embraced by the bene- 
ficence of this system. ^ * The error of 
the opposite argument, is in assuming one 
thing, which, being denied, the whole fails ; 
that is, it assumes that the wJiole labor of the 
United States would be profitably employed 
without manufactures. Now, the truth is, that 
the system excites and creates labor, and this 
labor creates wealth, and this new wealth com- 
municates additional ability to consume ; which 
acts on all the objects contributing to human 
comfort and enjoyment. ^ I could ex- 

tend and dwell on the long list of articles — the 
hemp, iron, lead, coal, and other items — for 
which a demand is created in the home market 
by the operation of the American system ; but 
I should exhaust the patience of the Senate. 
Where, where should we find a market for all 
these articles, if it did not exist at home? 
What would be the condition of the largest 
portion of our people, and of the territory, if 



104 COTTON IS KING. 

this home market were annihilated? How 
could they be supplied with objects of prime 
necessity ? What would not be the certain and 
inevitable decline in the price of all these arti- 
cles, but for the home market ?" 

But we must not burden our pages with 
further extracts. What has been quoted affords 
the principal arguments of the opposing parties, 
on the points in which we are interested, down 
to 1832. The adjustment, in 1833, of the 
subject until 1842, and its subsequent agita- 
tion, are too familiar, or of too easy access to 
the general reader, to require a notice from us 
here. 

The results of the contest, in relation to Pro- 
tection and Free Trade, have been more or less 
favorable to all parties. This has been an 
effect, in part, of the changeable character of 
our legislation ; and, in part, of the occurrence 
of events over which politicians had no control. 
The manufacturing States, while protection 
lasted, succeeded in placing their establish- 
ments upon a comparatively permanent basis ; 
and, by engaging largely in the manufacture 



COTTON IS KING. 105 

of cottons, as well as woolens, have rendered 
home manufactures, practically, very advan- 
tageous to the South. Our cotton factories, in 
1850, consumed as much cotton as those of 
Great Britain did in 1831 ; thus affording indi- 
cations, that, by proper encouragement, they 
may he multiplied so as to consume the whole 
crop of the country. The cotton and woolen 
factories, in 1850, employed over 130,000 work 
hands, and had JI102, 61 9,581 of capital invested 
in them. They thus afford an important mar- 
ket to the farmer, and, at the same time, have 
become an equally important auxiliary to the 
planter. They may yet afford him the only 
market for his cotton. 

The cotton planting States, toward the close 
of the contest, found themselves rapidly accumu- 
lating strength, and approximating the accom- 
plishment of the grand object at which they 
aimed — the monopoly of the cotton markets of 
the world. This success was due, not so much to 
any triumph over the North — to any prostration 
of our manufacturing interests — as to the gen- 
eral policy of other nations. AH rivalry to 
9 



106 COTTON IS KING. 

the American planters, in the West Indies, was 
removed by emancipation ; as, under freedom, 
the cultivation of cotton was nearly abandoned. 
Mehemet Ali had become imbecile, and the 
indolent Egyptians neglected its culture. The 
South Americans, after achieving their inde- 
pendence, were more readily enlisted in military 
forays, than in the art of agriculture, and they 
produced little cotton for export. Brazil and 
India both supplied to Europe considerably less 
in 1838 than they had done in 1820; and the 
latter country made no material increase after- 
ward, except when her chief customer, China, 
was at war, or prices were above the average 
rates in Europe. While the cultivation of 
cotton was thus stationary or retrograding, 
everywhere outside of the United States, Eng- 
land and the Continent were rapidly increasing 
their consumption of the article, which they 
nearly doubled from 1835 to 1845 ; so that the 
demand for the raw material called loudly for 
its increased production. Our planters gathered 
a rich harvest of profits by these events. 

But this is not all that is worthy of note, in 



COTTON IS KING. 107 

this strange chapter of providences. No pro- 
minent event occurred, but conspired to advance 
the prosperity of the cotton trade, and the value 
of American Slavery. Even the very depression 
suffered by the manufacturers and cultivators 
of cotton, from 1825 to 1829, served to place 
the manufacturing interests upon the broad 
and firm basis they now occupy. It forced the 
Planters into the production of their cotton at 
reduced rates ; and led the Manufacturers to 
improve their machinery, and reduce the price 
of their fabrics low enough to sweep away all 
Household manufacturing, and secure to them- 
selves the monopoly of clothing the civilized 
world. This was the object at which the British 
manufacturers had aimed, and in which they 
had been eminently successful. The growing 
manufactures of the United States, and of the 
Continent of Europe, had not yet sensibly affected 
their operations. 

There is still another point requiring a pass- 
ing notice, as it may serve to explain some por- 
tions of the history of Slavery, not so well 
understood. It was not until events diminish- 



108 COTTON IS KING. 

ing the foreign growtli of cotton, and enlarging 
the demand for its fabrics, had been extensively 
developed, that the older cotton-growing States, 
became willing to allow Slavery extension in 
the Southwest ; and, even then, their assent was 
reluctantly given — the markets for cotton, 
doubtless, being considered sufficiently limited 
for the territory under cultivation. Up to 1824 
the Indians held over thirty-two millions of acres 
of land in Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, 
and over twenty millions of acres in Florida, 
Missouri, and Arkansas ; which was mostly 
retained by them as late as 1836. Although 
the States interested had repeatedly urged the 
matter upon Congress, and some of them even 
resorted to forcible means to gain possession of 
these Indian lands, the Government did not 
fulfill its promise to remove the Indians until 
1836. 

The older States, however, had found, by this 
time, that the foreign and home demand for 
cotton was so rapidly increasing, that there 
was little danger of over-production ; and that 
they had, in fact, secured to themselves the 



COTTON IS KING. 109 

monopoly of the foreign markets. Beside this, 
the Abolition movement, at that moment, had 
assumed its most threatening aspect, and was 
demanding the destruction of Slavery or the 
dissolution of the Union. Here was a double 
motive operating to produce harmony in the 
ranks of Southern politicians, and to awaken the 
fears of many. North and South, for the safety 
of the Government. Here, also, was the origin of 
the determination, in the South, to extend Slav- 
ery, by the annexation of territory, so as to 
gain the political preponderance in the National 
Councils, and protect its interests against the 
interference of the North. 

It was not the increased demand for cotton, 
alone, that served as a protection to the older 
States. The extension of its cultivation, in the 
degree demanded by the wants of commerce, 
could only be affected by a corresponding in- 
creased supply of Provisions. Without this it 
could not increase, except by enhancing their 
price to the injury of the older States. This 
food did not fail to be in readiness, so soon as it 
was needed. Indeed, much of it had long been 



110 COTTON IS KING. 

awaiting an outlet to a profitable market. Its 
surplus, too, had been materially increased, by 
the Temperance movement in the North, which 
had checked, somewhat, the distillation of grain. 
The West, which had long looked to the East 
for a market, had its attention now turned to 
the South, as the most certain and convenient 
mart for the sale of its products — the Planters 
affording to the Farmers, the markets they had 
in vain sought from the Manufacturers. In the 
meantime steamboat navigation was acquiring 
perfection on the Western rivers — the great 
natural outlets for Western products — and 
became a means of communication between the 
Northwest and the Southwest, as well as with 
the trade and commerce of the Atlantic cities. 
This gave an impulse to industry and enter- 
prise, west of the Alleghanies, unparalleled in 
the history of the country. While, then, the 
bounds of Slave labor were extending from 
Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, westward, 
over Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Ar- 
kansas, the area of Free labor was enlarging, 
with equal rapidity, in the Northwest, through- 



COTTON IS KING. Ill 

out Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. Thus 
within these Provision and Cotton regions, were 
the forests cleared awaj, or the prairies broken 
up, simultaneously, by these old antagonistic 
forces, opponents no longer, but harmonized by 
the fusion of their interests — the connecting 
link between them being the steamboat. Thus, 
also, was a tripartite alliance formed, by which 
the Western Farmer, the Southern Planter, and 
the English Manufacturer, became united in a 
common bond of interest — the whole giving 
their support to the doctrines of Free Trade. 

This active commerce between the West and 
South, however, soon caused a rivalry in ih.Q 
East, that pushed forward improvements, by 
States or Corporations, to gain a share in the 
Western trade. These improvements, as com- 
pleted, gave to the West a choice of markets, 
so that its Farmers could elect whether to feed 
the slave who grows the cotton, or the operatives 
who are engaged in its manufacture. But this 
rivalry did more. The competition for Western 
products enhanced their price, and stimulated 
their more extended cultivation. This required 



112 COTTON IS KING. 

an enlargement of the markets ; and the ex- 
tension of Slavery became essential to Western 
prosperity. 

We have not reached the end of the alliance 
between the Western Farmer and Southern 
Planter. The emigration which has been fill- 
ing Iowa and Minnesota, and is now rolling like 
a flood into Kansas and Nebraska, is but a 
repetition of what has occurred in the other 
Western States and Territories. Agricultural 
pursuits are highly remunerative, and tens of 
thousands of men of moderate means, or of no 
means, are cheered along to where none forbids 
them land to till. For the last few years, pub- 
lic improvements have called for vastly more 
than the usual share of labor, and augmented 
the consumption of Provisions. The foreign 
demand added to this, has increased their price 
beyond what the Planter can afford to pay. 
For many years Free and Slave labor main- 
tained an even race in their Western progress. 
Of late the Freemen have begun to lag behind, 
while Slavery has advanced by several degrees 
of longitude. Free labor must be made to keep 



COTTON IS KING. 113 

pace witli it. There is an urgent necessity for 
this. The demand for cotton is increasing in 
a ratio greater than can he supplied hy the 
American planters, unless by a corresponding 
increased production. They must meet this 
increasing demand, or its cultivation will he 
facilitated elsewhere, and our monopoly of the 
European markets he interrupted. This can only 
he effected hy concentrating the greatest possible 
number of the slaves upon the cotton plantations. 
Hence they must be supplied with provisions. 

This is the present aspect of the Provision 
question, as it regards Slavery extension. Prices 
are approximating the maximum point, beyond 
which our provisions can not be fed to slaves. 
Such a result was not anticipated by Southern 
statesmen, when they had succeeded in over- 
throwing the Protective policy, destroying the 
United States Bank, and establishing the Sub- 
Treasury system. And why has this occurred ? 
The mines of California prevented both the 
Free-Trade Tariff,* and the Sub-Treasury scheme 

■'The Tariff of 1S16, under wliich our imports are now 
made, approximates the Free Trade principles very closely. 



114 COTTON IS KING. 

from exhausting the country of the precious 
metals, extinguishing the circulation of Bank 
Notes, and reducing the prices of agricultural 
products to the specie value. At the date of 
the passage of the Nehraska Bill, the multipli- 
cation of provisions, by their more extended cul- 
tivation, was the only measure left that could 
produce a reduction of prices, and meet the 
wants of the planters. The Canadian reciprocity 
treaty, since secured, will bring the products of 
the British North American Colonies, free of 
duty, into competition with those of the United 
States, when prices, with us, rule high, and tend 
to diminish their cost ; but in the event of scar- 
city in Europe, or of foreign wars, the opposite 
results may occur, as our products, in such times, 
will pass, free of duty, through these Colonies, 
into the foreign market. It is apparent, then, 
that nothing short of extended Free-labor culti- 
vation, far distant from the seaboard, where the 
products will bear transportation to none but 
Southern markets, can fully secure the Cotton 
interests from the contingencies that so often 
threaten them with ruinous embarrassments. 



COTTON IS KING. 115 

In fact, such a depression of our cotton interests 
has only been averted by the advanced prices 
which cotton has commanded, for the last few 
years, in consequence of the increased European 
demand, and its diminished cultivation abroad. 
The dullest intellect can not fail, now, to 
perceive the rationale of the Kansas-Nebraska 
movement. The political influence which these 
Territories will give to the South, if secured, 
will be of the first importance to perfect its 
arrangements for future Slavery extension — 
whether by divisions of the larger States and 
Territories now secured to the institution, its 
extension into territory hitherto considered free, 
or the acquisition of new territory to be devoted 
to the system, so as to preserve the balance of 
power in Congress. When this is done, Kansas 
and Nebraska, like Kentucky and Missouri, will 
be of little consequence to slaveholders, com- 
pared with the cheap and constant supply of 
provisions they can yield. Nothing, therefore, 
will so exactly coincide with Southern interests, 
as a rapid emigration of freemen into these new 
Territories. Free labor, doubly productive over 



116 COTTON IS KING. 

Slave labor, in grain-growing, must be multiplied 
within tbeir limits, that the cost of provisions 
may be reduced, and tbe extension of Slavery 
and tlie growth of cotton suffer no interruption. 
The present efforts to plant them with Slavery, 
are indispensable to produce sufficient excite- 
ment to fill them speedily with a free population ; 
and if this whole movement has been a South- 
ern scheme to cheapen provisions, and increase 
the ratio of the production of sugar and cotton, 
as it most unquestionably will do, it surpasses 
the statesman-like strategy which forced the 
people into an acquiescence in the annexation of 
Texas. 

And should the Anti-Slavery voters succeed in 
gaining the political ascendency in these Terri- 
tories, and bring them as free States triumph- 
antly into the Union ; what can they do, but 
turn in, as all the rest of the Western States 
have done, and help to feed slaves, or those who 
manufacture or who sell the products of the 
labor of slaves. There is no other resource left, 
either to them or ourselves, without an entire 
change in almost every branch of business and 



COTTON IS KING. 117 

of domestic economy. Look at your bills of 
dry-goods for the year, and what do they con- 
tain ? At least three-fonrths of the amount are 
French, English, or American cotton fabrics, 
woven from Slave-labor cotton. Look at your 
bills for groceries, and what do they contain ? 
Coffee, sugar, molasses, rice — from Brazil, Cuba, 
Louisiana, Carolina ; while only a mere fraction 
of them are from Free-labor countries. As now 
employed, our dry-goods merchants and grocers 
constitute an immense army of agents for the 
sale of fabrics and products, coming directly or 
indirectly, from the hand of the slave ; and all 
the remaining portion of the people, free colored, 
as well as white, are exerting themselves, accord- 
ing to their various capacities, to gain the means 
of purchasing the greatest possible amount of 
these commodities. Nor can the country, at 
present, by any possibility, pay for the amount 
of foreign goods consumed, but by the labor of 
the slaves of the planting States. This can not 
be doubted for a moment. Here is the proof : 
Commerce supplied us, in 1853, with foreign 
articles, for consumption, to the value of 



118 COTTON IS KING. 

;J250,420,187, and accepted in exchange, of our 
provisions, to the value of but $33,809,126 ; while 
the products of our Slave labor, manufactured 
and unmanufactured, paid to the amount of 
JS133, 648,603, on the balance of this foreign 
debt. This, then, is the measure of the ability 
of the farmers and planters, respectively, to meet 
the payment of the necessaries and comforts of 
life, supplied to the country by its foreign com- 
merce. The farmer pays, or seems only to pay, 
$33,800,000, while the planter has a broad 
credit, on the account, of g!l 33,600,000. 

But is this seeming productiveness of Slavery 
real, or is it only imaginary ? Has the system 
such capacities, over the other industrial inter- 
ests of the nation, in the creation of wealth, as 
these fip'ures indicate? Or, are these results 
due to its intermediate position between the 
agriculture of the country and its foreign com- 
merce ? These are questions worthy of consider- 
ation. Were the planters left to grow their own 
provisions, they would, as already intimated, be 
unable to produce any cotton for export. That 
their present ability to export so extensively, is 



COTTON IS KING. 119 

in consequence of the aid they receive from the 
North, is proved by facts such as these : 

In 1820, the cotton-gin had been a quarter of 
a century in operation, and the culture of cotton 
was then as well understood as at present. The 
North, thouo-h furnishino; the South with some 
live stock, had scarcely begun to supply it with 
Provisions, and the planters had to grow the 
food, and manufacture much of the clothing for 
their slaves. In that year the cotton crop 
equaled 109 lbs. to each slave in the Union, of 
which 83 lbs. per slave were exported. In 1830 
the exports of the article had risen to 143 lbs., 
in 1810 to 295 lbs., and in 1853 to 337 lbs. per 
slave. The total cotton crop of 1853, equaled 
485 lbs. per slave — making both the production 
and export of that staple, in 1853, more than 
four times as large, in proportion to the Slave 
population, as they were in 1820.* Had the 

'" The progressive increase is indicated by the following 

figures : 

1820 1830 1810 1853 

Total slaves in U. S., - - 1,538,098 - - 2,009,043 - - 2,487,356 3,296,408 

Cot. Exp'd, ---lbs. ,127,800,000 298,459,102 743,941,061 1,111,570,370 
Av'ge ex. to each slave, lbs., 83 143 295 337 



120 COTTON IS KING. 

planters, in 1853, been able to produce no 
more cotton, per slave, than in 1820, they Avould 
have grown but 359,308,472 lbs., instead of the 
actual crop of 1,600,000,000 lbs. ; and would not 
only have failed to supply any for export, but 
have fallen short of the home demand, by nearly 
130,000,000 lbs., and been minus the total crop 
of that year, by 1,240,690,000 lbs. 

In this estimate, some allowance, perhaps, 
should be made, for the greater fertility of the 
new lands, more recently brought under culti- 
vation ; but the difference, on this account, can 
not be equal to the difference in the crops of the 
several periods, as the lands, in the older States, 
in 1820, were yet comparatively fresh and pro- 
ductive. 

Again, the dependence of the South upon the 
North, for its provisions, may be inferred from 
such additional facts as these : The " Abstract 
of the Census, '^ for 1850, shows, that the pro- 
duction of wheat, in Florida, Alabama, Missis- 
sippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, aver- 
aged, the year preceding, very little more than 
a peck, (it was 27-100 of a bushel,) to each 



COTTON IS KENG. 121 

person within their limits. These States must 
purchase flour largely, but to what amount we 
can not determine. The shipments of provi- 
sions from Cincinnati to New Orleans and other 
down river ports, show that large supplies leave 
that city for the South ; but what proportion of 
them is taken for consumption by the planters, 
must be left, at present, to conjecture. These 
shipments, as to a few of the prominent arti- 
cles, for the four years ending August 31, 1854, 
averaged, annually, the following amounts: 

Wheat flour . . . bbls. 385,204 

Pork and bacon, in bulk and in barrels'-- - - lbs. 21,095,930 

hogsheads - hhds. 20,767 

" " tierces, - tcs. 15,478 

Whiskyt - gals. 8,115,3(jO 

Cincinnati also exports eastward, by canal, 
river, and railroad, large amounts of these pro- 
ductions. The towns and cities westward send 
more of their products to the South, as their 
distance increases the cost of transportation 
to the East. But, in the absence of full statis- 



'" Barrels estimated to contain 196 lbs. each, 
f Barrels estimated at 40 gallons each. 

10 



122 COTTON IS KING. 

tics, it is not necessary to make additional 
statements. 

From this view of tlie subject, it appears 
that Slavery is not a self-sustaining system, 
independently remunerative; but that it attains 
its importance to the nation and to the world, 
by standing as an agency, intermediate between 
the grain-growing States and foreign commerce. 
As the distillers of the West transformed the 
surplus grain into whisky, that it might bear 
transport, so Slavery takes the products of the 
North, and metamorphoses them into cotton, 
that they may bear export. 

It seems, indeed, when the whole of the facts 
brought to view are considered, that American 
Slavery, though of little force unaided, yet, 
properly sustained, is the great central power, 
or energizing influence, not only of nearly all 
the industrial interests of our own country, 
but also of those of Great Britain and much of 
the Continent ; and that, if stricken from exist- 
ence, the whole of these interests, with the 
advancing civilization of the age, would receive 



COTTON IS KING. - " 123 

a shock that must retard their progress for 
years to come. 

This is no exaggerated picture of the present 
imposing power of Slavery. It is literally true. 
Southern men believed that the Protective 
Tariff would have paralyzed it — would have 
destroyed it. But the Abolitionists, led off by 
politicians and editors, who advocated Free 
Trade, were made the instruments of its over- 
throw. No such extended mining and manu- 
facturing, as the Protective system would have 
created, has now any existence in the Union. 
Under it, more than one hundred and sixty 
millions in value, of the foreign imports for 
1853, would have been produced in our own 
country. But Free Trade is dominant : the 
South has triumphed in its warfare with the 
North : the political power passed into its hands 
with the defeat of the Father of the Protective 
Tariff, ten years since, in the last effort of his 
friends to elevate him to the Presidency : the 
Slaveholding and commercial interests then 
gained the ascendency, and secured the power 
of annexing territory at will : the nation has 



124 COTTON IS KING. 

become ricli in commerce, and nnbounded in 
ambition for territorial aggrandizement: the 
people acquiesce in tlie measures of Govern- 
ment, and are proud of its influence in the 
world ; nay, more, the peaceful aspect of the 
nations has been changed, and the policy of 
our own country must be modified to meet the 
exigencies that may arise. 

One word more on the point we have been 
considering. With the defeat of Mr. Clay, 
came the immediate annexation of Texas, and, 
as he predicted, the war with Mexico. The 
results of these events let loose from its attach- 
ments a mighty avalanche of emigration and 
of enterprise, under the rule of the Free Trade 
policy, then adopted, which, by the golden 
treasures it yields, renders that system, thus 
far, self-sustaining, and able to move on, as its 
friends believe, with a momentum that forbids 
any attempt to return again to the system of 
Protection. Whether the Tariff controversy is 
permanently settled, or not, is a question about 
which we shall not speculate. It may be re- 
marked, however, that one of the leading par- 



COTTON IS KING. 125 

ties in tlie North, gave in its adhesion to Free 
Trade many years since, and still continues to 
vote with the South. The leading Aholition 
paper, too, ever since its origin, has advocated 
the Southern Free Trade system ; and thus, in 
defending the cause it has espoused, as was said 
of a certain General in the Mexican war, its 
editor has heen digging his ditches on the 
wrong side of his breastworks. To say the 
least, his position is a very strange one, for 
a man who professes to labor for the overthrow 
of American Slavery. It would be as rational 
to pour oil upon a burning edifice, to extinguish 
the fire, as to attempt to overthrow that system 
under the rule of Free Trade. 

All these things together have paralyzed the 
advocates of the protection of Free labor, at 
present, as fully as the North has thereby been 
shorn of its power to control the question of 
Slavery. Indeed, from what has been said of 
the present position of American Slavery, in 
its relations to the other industrial interests 
of the country, and of the world, there is no 
longer any doubt that it now completes the 



126 COTTON IS KING. 

home market, so zealously urged as essential to 
the prosperity of the Agricultural population of 
the country: and which, it was supposed, could 
only he created hy the multiplication of domestic 
manufactures. This desideratum being gained, 
the great majority of the people have nothing 
more to ask, but seem desirous that our foreign 
commerce shall be cherished ; that the cultiva- 
tion of cotton and sugar shall be extended ; 
that the nation shall become cumulative as 
well as progressive ; that as Despotism is 
striving to spread its raven wing over the earth, 
Freedom must strengthen itself for the protec- 
tion of the liberties of the vvorld ; that while 
three millions of Africans, only, are held to 
involuntary servitude for a time, to sustain the 
system of Free Trade, the freedom of hundreds 
of millions is involved in the preservation of 
the American Constitution ; and that as African 
emancipation, in every experiment made, has 
thrown a dead weight upon Anglo-Saxon pro- 
gress, the colored people must wait a little, 
until the general battle for the liberties of the 
civilized nations is gained, before the universal 



COTTON IS KING. 127 

elevation of tlie barbarous tribes can be 
acbieved. This work, it is true, bas been com- 
menced at various outposts in heatbendom, by 
the missionary, but is impeded by numberless 
binderances ; and these obstacles to the progress 
of Christian civilization, doubtless will continue, 
until the friends of civil and religious liberty 
shall triumph in nominally Christian countries, 
and, with the wealth of the nations at com- 
mand, instead of applying it to purposes of 
war, shall devote it to sweeping away the dark- 
ness of superstition and barbarism from the 
earth, by extending the knowledge of Science 
and Eevelation to all the families of man. 

But we must hasten. 

There are none who will deny the truth of 
what is said of the present strength and influ- 
ence of Slavery, however much they may have 
deprecated its acquisition of power. There are 
none who think it practicable to assail it, suc- 
cessfully, by political action, in the States where 
it is already established by law. The struggle 
against the system, therefore, is narrowed down 
to an effort to prevent its extension into territory 



128 COTTON IS KING. 

now free ; and this contest is limited to the 
people of the Territories themselves. The ques- 
tion is thus taken out of the hands of the people 
at large, and they are cut off from all control 
of Slavery, both in the States and Territories. 
Hence it is, that the American people are 
considering the propriety of banishing this dis- 
tracting question from national politics, and 
demanding of their statesmen that there shall 
no longer be an}^ delay in the adoption of meas- 
ures to sustain the Constitution and laws of our 
glorious Union, against all its enemies, whether 
domestic or foreign. 

The policy of adopting this course, may be 
liable to objection ; but it does not appear to 
arise from any disposition to prove recreant to 
the cause of philanthropy, that the people of 
the Free States are resolving to divorce the 
Slavery question from all connection with polit- 
ical movements. It is because they now find 
themselves wholly powerless, as did the Coloni- 
zationists, forty years since, in regard to eman- 
cipation, and are thus forced into a position of 
neutrality upon that subject. A word on this 



COTTON IS KING. 129 

point. The friends of Colonization, in the outset 
of that enterprise, found themselves shut up to 
the necessity of creating a Eepublic on the shores 
of Africa, as the only hope for the Free colored 
people — the further emancipation of the slaves, 
by State action, having become impracticable. 
After nearly forty years of experimenting with 
the free colored people, by others, Colonization- 
ists still find themselves circumscribed in their 
operations, to their original design of building- 
up the Eepublic of Liberia, as the only rational 
hope of the elevation of the African race — the 
prospects of general emancipation being a thou- 
sand-fold more gloomy in 1855 than they were 
in 1817. But to return. The people at large, 
too, begin not only to realize their own want of 
power over the institution of Slavery, and the 
futility of any measures hitherto adopted to 
arrest its progress, and elevate the free colored 
people ; but they have also discovered agencies 
at work, heretofore overlooked, except by few, 
which are tending to sap the foundations of our 
Free Institutions, and to subject us to influences 

that have crushed the liberties of Europe, and 
11 



130 COTTON IS KING. 

whicli, if permitted to become dominant here, 
will blot out our bappy Kepublic, and, with it, 
the liberties of the world. 

In such a crisis as this, shall the friends of 
the Union be rebuked, if they determine to take 
a position of neutrality, in politics, on the sub- 
ject of Slavery ; while, at the same time, they 
offer to guarantee the Free colored people a 
Kepublic of their own, where they may equal 
other races, and aid in redeeming a continent 
from the woes it has suffered for thousands of 
years ! 

3. The social and moral condition of the free 
people of color, in the British colonies, and in 
the United States ; and the new field opening 
in Liberia for the display of their powers. 

We have noticed the social and moral condi- 
tion of the free colored people, from the days of 
Franklin, to the projection of Colonization. We 
have also glanced at the main facts in relation 
to the Abolition warfare upon Colonization, and 
its success in paralyzing the enterprise. This 
demands a more extended notice. The most 
serious injury from this hostility, sustained by 



COTTON IS KING. 131 

the cause of Colonization, was the prejudice 
created, in the minds of the more intelligent 
free colored men, against emigration to Liheria. 
The Colonization Society had expressed its belief 
in the natural equality of the blacks and whites ; 
and that there were a sufficient number of edu- 
cated, upright, free colored men, in the United 
States, to establish and sustain a Eepublic on 
the coast of Africa, " whose citizens, rising rap- 
idly in the scale of existence, under the stimu- 
lants to noble effort by which they would be 
surrounded, might soon become equal to the 
people of Europe, or of European origin — so long 
their masters and oppressors.'^ These were the 
sentiments of the first Keport of the Coloniza- 
tion Society, and often repeated since. Its 
appeals were made to the moral and intelligent 
of the Free colored people ; and, with their co- 
operation, the success of its scheme was consid- 
ered certain. But the very persons needed to 
lead the enterprise, were, mostly, persuaded to 
reject the proffered aid, and the Society was left 
to prosecute its plans with such materials as 
offered. In consequence of this opposition, it 



132 COTTON IS KING. 

was greatly embarrassed, and made less progress 
in its work of African redemption, than it must 
liave done under other circumstances. Had 
three-fourths of its emigrants been the enlight- 
ened, free colored men of the country, a dozen 
Liberias might now gird the coast of Africa, 
where but one exists ; and the Slave trader be 
entirely excluded from its shores. Doubtless, a 
wise Providence has governed here, as in other 
human affairs, and may have permitted this 
result, to show how speedily even semi-civilized 
men can be elevated under American Protestant 
Pree Institutions. The great body of emigrants 
to Liberia, and nearly all the leading men who 
have sprung up in the Colony, and contributed 
most to the formation of the Eepublic, went out 
from the very midst of Slavery ; and yet, what 
encouraging results ! It has been a sad mistake 
to oppose American Colonization, and thus to 
retard Africa's redemption ! 

But how has it fared with the Free colored 
people elsewhere ? The answer to this question 
will be the solution of the inquiry. What has 
Abolitionism accomplished by its hostility to 



COTTON IS KING. 133 

Colonization, and what is the condition of the 
free colored people, whose interests it volunteered 
to promote, and whose destinies it attempted to 
control ? 

The Abolitionists themselves shall answer this 
question. The colored people shall see what 
kind of commendations their tutors give them, 
and what the world is to think of them, on the 
testimony of their particular friends. 

The concentration of a colored population in 
Canada, is the work of American Abolitionists. 
In 1848, Eev. E. Smith, a prominent Aboli- 
tionist of Ohio, was acting: as their accent, in 
collecting funds for their relief. In an appeal 
for aid, published in tlie Clarion of 'Freedom, 
Feb. 18, he represented them as "destitute of 
education, and, like all other uneducated per- 
sons, having no great appreciation of its value, 
and not making the exertions they should to 
secure it to themselves or their children.^^ 

Tlie American Missionary Association, is the 
organ of the Abolitionists, for the spread of a 
Gospel untainted, it is claimed, by contact with 
Slavery. Out of four stations under its care, 



134 COTTON IS KING. 

in Canada, at the opening of 1853, hut one 
school, that of Miss Lyon, remained at its close. 
All the others were abandoned, and all the mis- 
sionaries had asked to be released,'--' as we are 
informed by its Seventh Annual Eeport, mainly, 
for the reasons stated in the following extract, 
page 49 : 

*' The number of missionaries and teachers 
in Canada, with which the year commenced, 
has been greatly reduced. Early in the year, 
Mr. KiRKLAND wrote to the Committee, that 
the opposition to white missionaries, manifested 
by the colored people of Canada, had so greatly 
increased, by the interested misrepresentations 
of ignorant colored men , pretending to be min- 
isters of the Gospel, that he thought his own 
and his wife's labors, and the funds of the 
Association, could be better employed else- 
where." 

It is not our purpose to multiply testimony 
on this subject, but simply to afford an index to 
the condition of the colored people, as described 

••'* Mr. Wilson, the Missionary at St. Catherines, still 
remained there, but not under the care of the Association. 



COTTON IS KING. 135 

by Abolition pens, best known to the public. 
West India Emancipation, under the guidance 
of English Abolitionists, has always been viewed 
as the grand experiment, which was to convince 
the world of the capacity of the colored man to 
rise, side by side, with the white man. We 
shall let the friends of the system testify as to 
its results. Opening, again, the Seventh Annual 
Eeport of the American Missionary Association, 
page 30, we find it written : 

" One of our missionaries, in giving a descrip- 
tion of the moral condition of the people of 
Jamaica, after speaking of the licentiousness 
which they received as a legacy from those who 
denied them the pure joys of holy wedlock, and 
trampled upon and scourged chastity, as if it 
were a fiend to be driven out from among men — 
that enduring legacy which, with its foul, pesti- 
lential influence, still blights, like the mildew 
of death, everything in society that should be 
lovely, virtuous, and of good report ; and allud- 
ing to their intemperance, in which they have 
followed the example set by the Governor in 
his palace, the Bishop in his robes, statesmen 



136 COTTON IS KING. 

and judges, lawyers and doctors, planters and 
overseers, and even professedly Christian minis- 
ters ; and the deceit and falsehood which oppres- 
sion and wrong always engender, says : ' It 
must not be forgotten that we are followino; in 
the wake of the accursed system of Slavery — 
a system that unmakes man, by warring upon 
his conscience and crushing his spirit, leaving 
naught but the shattered wrecks of humanity 
behind it. If we may but gather up some of 
these floating fragments, from which the image 
of God is well nigh effaced, and pilot them 
safely to that better land, we shall not have 
labored in vain. But we may liope to do more. 
The chief fruit of our labors is to be sought in 
the future rather than in the present.'' It should 
be remembered, too, (continues the Eeport,) that 
there is but a small part of the population yet 
brought within the reach of the influence of 
enlightened Christian teachers, while the great 
mass by whom they are surrounded are but little 
removed from actual heathenism." Another 
missionary, page 33, says, it is the opinion of 
all intelligent Christian men, that "■ nothing 



COTTON IS KING. 137 

save tlie furnisliing of tlie people witli ample 
means of education and religious instruction 
will save them from relapsing into a state of 
barbarism.^' And anotber, page 36, in speak- 
ing of certain cases of discipline, for the bigbest 
form of crime, under tbe seventh commandment, 
says : " There is nothing in public sentiment to 
save tbe youth of Jamaica in this respect.'^ 

Tbe missions of this Association, in Jamaica, 
differ scarcely a shade from those among tbe 
actual heathen. On this point, the Keport, near 
its close, says : 

" For most of tbe adult population of Jamaica, 
tbe unhappy victims of long years of oppression 
and degradation, our missionaries have great 
fear. Yet for even these there may be hope, 
even though with trembling. But it is around 
the youth of tbe island that their brightest 
hopes and anticipations cluster ; from them they 
expect to gather their principal sheaves for the 
great Lord of the harvest.' ' 

Thus far we have drawn upon tbe American 
Missionary Association. Next we turn to the 
Annual Report of the American and loreign 



138 COTTON IS KING. 

Anti- Slavery Society, 1853, which discourses thus, 
in its own language, and in quotations which it 
indorses : * 

" The friends of emancipation in the United 
States have heen disappointed in some respects 
at the results in the West Indies, because they 
expected too much. A nation of slaves can not 
at once be converted into a nation of intelligent, 
industrious, and moral freemen.'^ '" '" " It 
is not too much, even now, to say of the people 
of Jamaica, " '■' their condition is exceed- 
ingly degraded, their morals woefully corrupt. 
But this must by no means be understood to be 
of universal application. With respect to those 
who have been brought under a healthful edu- 
cational and religious influence, it is not true. 
But as respects the great mass, whose humanity 
has been ground out of them by cruel oppres- 
sion — whom no good Samaritan hand has yet 
reached — how could it be otherwise ? We wish 
to turn the tables ; to supplant oppression by 
righteousness, insult by compassion and brotherly- 

*» Page 170. 



COTTON IS KING. 139 

kindness, hatred and contempt by love and win- 
ning meekness, till we allure tliese wretched 
ones to the hope and enjoyment of manhood and 
virtue.^'* ^ * " The means of education and 
religious instruction are better enjoyed, although 
but little appreciated and improved by the great 
mass of the people. It is also true, that the 
moral sense of the people is becoming somewhat 
enlightened. '••-' ^^ But while this is true, yet 
their moral condition is very far from being what 
it ought to be. * * It is exceeding dark and 
distressing. Licentiousness prevails to a most 
alarming extent among the people. "' '•'= The 
almost universal prevalence of intemperance is 
another prolific source of the moral darkness 
and degradation of the people. The great mass, 
among all classes of the inhabitants, from the 
Grovernor in his palace to the peasant in his hut — 
from the bishop in his gown to the beggar in his 
rags — are all slaves to their cups."f 

" Extract from the report of a missionary, quoted in 
the Report, page 172. 

f Extract from the report of another missionary, page 
171, of the Report. 



140 COTTON IS KING. 

This is the language of American Abolition- 
ists, going out under the sanction of their Annual 
Eeports. Lest it may be considered as too highly 
colored, we add the following from the London 
Times, of near the same date. Li speaking of 
the results of emancipation, in Jamaica, it says : 

" The negro has not acquired with his free- 
dom any habits of industry or morality. His 
independence is but little better than that of an 
uncaptured brute. Having accepted few of the 
restraints of civilization, he is amenable to few 
of its necessities ; and the wants of his nature 
are so easily satisfied, that at the current rate 
of wages, he is called upon for nothing but fit- 
ful or desultory exertion. The blacks, there- 
fore, instead of becoming intelligent husband- 
men, have become vagrants and squatters, and 
it is now apprehended that with the failure of 
cultivation in the island will come the failure 
of its resources for instructing or controlling its 
population. So imminent does this consumma- 
tion appear, that memorials have been signed 
by classes of colonial society hitherto standing 
aloof from politics, and not only the bench and 



COTTON IS KING. 141 

the bar, but the bishop, clergy, and ministers 
of all denominations in the island, without ex- 
ceptions, have recorded their conviction, that, in 
the absence of timely relief, the religious and 
educational institutions of the island must be 
abandoned, and the masses of the population 
retrograde to barbarism.'^ 

One of the editors of the New York Evening 
Post, Mr. BiGELOW, a few years since, spent a 
winter in Jamaica, and continues to watch, with 
anxious solicitude, as an Anti-Slavery man, the 
developments taking place among its emanci- 
pated freed men. In reviewing the returns pub- 
lished by the Jamaica House of Assembly, in 
1853, in reference to the ruinous decline in the 
Agriculture of the Island, and stating the enor- 
mous quantity of lands thrown out of cultiva- 
tion, since 1848, the Post says : 

" This decline has been going on from year 
to year, daily becoming more alarming, until at 
length the Island has reached what would appear 
to be the last profound of distress and misery, 
* * when thousands of people do not know, 
when they rise in the morning, whence or in 



142 COTTON IS KING. 

what manner they are to procure bread for the 
day." 

After such an array of testimony from Aboli- 
tion authorities, we may venture to present some 
corroborative evidence from other sources. Gov- 
ernor Wood, of Ohio, on his way to Valparaiso, 
in 1853, thus describes what he witnessed, at 
Kingston, Jamaica, while the steamer remained 
in that port : 

" We saw many plantations, the buildings 
dilapidated — fields of sugar-cane half-worked 
and apparently poor, and nothing but that which 
will grow without the labor of man, appeared 
luxuriant and flourishing. The island itself is 
of great fertility, one of the best of the Antilles ; 
but all the large estates upon it are now fast 
going to ruin. In the harbor were not a dozen 
ships of all nations — no business was doing, and 
everything you heard spoken was in the language 
of complaint. Since the blacks have been liber- 
ated they have become indolent, insolent, de- 
graded, and dishonest. They are a rude, beastly 
set of vagabonds, lying naked about the streets, 
as filthy as the Hottentots, and, I believe, worse." 



COTTON IS KING. 143 

Bishop Kip, of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, on his passage to California, in 1853, 
bears this testimony as to what he witnessed at 
the same port, while the steamer stopped to 
take in coal : 

" The streets are crowded with the most 
wretched-looking negroes to he seen on the face 
of the earth. Lazy, shiftless and diseased, they 
will not work, since the manumission act has 
freed them. Even coaling the steamer is done 
by women. About a hundred march on board 
in a line with tubs on their heads (tubs and coal 
together weighing about 90 pounds), and with 
a wild song empty them into the hold. The 
men work a day, and then live on it a week. 
The depth of degradation to which the negro 
population has sunk, is, we are told, inde- 
scribable.'' 

The foregoing testimony is conclusive, as to 
the results of emancipation in the West Indies. 
It fully confirms the opinions of Eranklin, that 
freedom, to unenlightened slaves, must be 
accompanied with the means of intellectual and 
moral elevation, otherwise it may be productive 



144 COTTON IS KING. 

of serious evils to themselves and to society. It 
also sustains the views entertained by Southern 
Slaveholders, that emancipation, unaccompanied 
by the colonization of the slaves, could be of no 
value to the blacks, while it would entail a 
ruinous burden upon the whites. These facts 
must not be overlooked in the projection of plans 
for emancipation, as none can receive the sanc- 
tion of Southern men, which does not embrace 
in it the removal of the colored people.- With 
the example of West India emancipation before 
them, and the results of which have been closely 
watched by them, it can not be expected that 
Southern statesmen will risk the liberation of 
their slaves, except on these conditions. 

In turning to the condition of our own Free 
colored people, who rejected homes in Liberia, 
we approach a most important subject. They 
have been under the guardianship of their Abo- 
lition friends, ever since that period, and have 
cherished feelings of determined hostility to 
Colonization. What have they gained by this 
hostility ? What has been accomplished for 
them by their Abolition friends, or what have 



COTTON IS KING. 145 

they done for themselves? Those who took 
refuge in Liberia, have built up a Eejiublic of 
their own, and are recognized as an independ- 
ent nation, by five of the great governments of 
the earth. But what has been the progress of 
those who remained behind, in the vain hope of 
rising to an equality with the whites, and of 
assisting in abolishing American Slavery ? 

We offer no opinion, here, of our own, as to 
the present social and moral condition of the 
Free colored people in the North. What it was 
at the time of the founding of Liberia, has 
already been shown. On this subject we might 
quote largely from the proceedings of their con- 
ventions, and the writings of their editors, so as 
to produce a dark picture indeed ; but this 
would be cruel, as their voices are but the wail- 
ings of noble, sensitive, and benevolent hearts, 
while weeping over the moral desolations that 
have overwhelmed their people. Nor shall we 
multiply testimony on the subject ; but in this, 
as in the case of Canada and the West Indies, 
allow the Abolitionists to speak of their own 

schemes. One witness only, the most calm and 
12 ^ 



146 COTTON IS KING. 

reliable of them all, need be quoted. Tbe Hon. 
Gerritt Smith, in bis letter to Governor Hunt, 
of Xew York, in IS 52, while speaking of his 
ineffectual efforts, for fifteen years past, to pre- 
vail upon the Free colored people to betake 
themselves to mechanical and agricultural pur- 
suits, says : 

" Suppose, moreover, that during all these 
fifteen years, they had been quitting the cities, 
ivliere the mass of tJiem rot both physicalhj and 
morally, and had gone into the country to be- 
come farmers and mechanics — suppose, I say, all 
this — and who would have the hardihood to 
affirm that the Colonization Society lives upon 
the malignity of the whites — but it is true that 
it lives upon the voluntary degradation of the 
blacks. I do not say that the colored people are 
more debased than white people would be if 
persecuted, oppressed and outraged as are the 
colored people. But I do say that they are de- 
based, deeply debased ; and that to recover 
themselves they must become heroes, self- 
denying heroes, capable of achieving a great 
moral \4ctory — a twofold Wctory — a victory 



COTTON IS KING. 147 

over themselves and a victory over tlieir ene- 
mies.'^ 

Here we must close our testimony on this 
point. The condition of the Free colored people 
can now be understood. The results, in their 
case, are vastly different from what was anti- 
cipated, when British philanthropists succeeded 
in West India emancipation. They are very 
different, also, from what was expected by 
American Abolitionists — so different, indeed, 
that their disappointment is fully manifested, in 
the extracts made from their published docu- 
ments. As an apology for the failure, it seems 
to be their aim to create the belief, that the 
dreadful moral depravation, existing in the 
West Indies, is wholly owing to the demoral- 
izing tendencies of Slavery. They speak of this 
effect as resulting from laws inherent in the 
system, which have no exceptions, and must be 
equally as active in the United States as in the 
British colonies. But in their zeal to cast odium 
on Slavery, they prove too much — for, if this be 
true, it follows, that the Slave population of 
the United States must be equally debased 



148 COTTON IS KING. 

with that of Jamaica, and as much disquali- 
fied to discharge the duties of freemen, as 
both have been subjected to the operations of 
the same system. This is not all. The logic 
of the argument would extend even to our free 
colored people, and include them, according to 
the American Missionary Association, in the dire 
efiPects of " that enduring legacy which, with its 
foul, pestilential influences, still blights, like the 
mildew of death, everything in society that 
should be lovely, virtuous, and of good report.'^ 
Now, were it believed, generally, that the col- 
ored people of the United States are equally 
as degraded as those of Jamaica, upon what 
grounds could any one advocate the admission of 
the blacks to equal social and political privi- 
leges with the whites ? Certainly, no Christian 
family or community would willingly admit 
such men to terms of social or political equality ! 
This, we repeat, is the logical conclusion from 
the Keports of the American Missionary Associ- 
ation and the American and Foreign Anti- Slavery 
Society — a conclusion, too, the more certain, as 
it makes no exceptions between the condition of 



COTTON IS KING. ' 149 

the colored people under the Slavery of Jamaica 
and under that of the United States. 

But in this, as in much connected with Slavery^ 
Abolitionists have taken too limited a view of 
the subject. They have not properly discrimi- 
nated between the effects of the original barbar- 
ism of the negroes, and the effects produced by 
the more or less favorable influences to which 
they were afterward subjected under Slavery. 
This point deserves special notice. According 
to the best authorities, the colored people of 
Jamaica, for nearly three hundred years, were 
entirely without the Gospel ; and it gained a 
permanent footing among them, only at a few 
points, at their emancipation, twenty years ago ; 
so that, when liberty reached them, the great 
mass of the Africans, in the British West Indies, 
were heathen.'-' Let us understand the reason 
of this. Slavery is not an element of human 
progress, under which the mind necessarily 
becomes enlightened ; but Cliristianity is the 
primary element of progress, and can elevate 

" Rev. Mr. Phillippo, for twenty years a missionary in 
Jamaica, in his " Jamaica, its Past and Present Condition." 



159 COTTON IS KING. 

the savage, whether in bondage or in freedom, 
if its principles are taught him in his youth. 
The Slavery of Jamaica began with savage men. 
For three hundred years its slaves were desti- 
tute of the Gospel, and their barbarism was left 
to perpetuate itself. But in the United States, 
the Africans were brought under the influence 
of Christianity, on their first introduction, over 
wo hundred and thirty years since, and have 
v.ontinued to enjoy its teachings, in a greater or 
less degree, to the present moment. The disap- 
pearance from among our colored people, of the 
heathen condition of the human mind — the in- 
capacity to comprehend religious truths — and 
its continued existence among those of Jamaica, 
can now be understood. The opportunities en- 
joyed by the former, for advancement over the 
latter, have been as six to one. With these facts 
before the mind, it is not diflScult to perceive, 
that the colored population of Jamaica, can not 
but still labor under the disadvantages of hered- 
itary heathenism and involuntary servitude, with 
the superadded misfortune of being inadequately 
supplied with Christian instruction, along with 



COTTON IS KING. . 161 

their recent acquisition of freedom. But while 
all this must be admitted, of the colored people 
of Jamaica, it is not true of those of our own 
country ; for, long since, they have cast off the 
heathenism of their fathers, and have become 
enlightened in a very encouraging degree. 
Hence it is, that the colored people of the 
United States, both bond and free, have made 
vastly greater progress, than those of the British 
West Indies, in their knowledge of moral duties 
and the requirements of the Gospel ; and hence, 
too, it is, that Gerritt Smith is right, in assert- 
ing, that the demoralized condition of the great 
mass of the Free colored people, in our cities, is 
inexcusable, and deserving of the utmost repro- 
bation, because it is voluntary — they knowing 
their duty, but abandoning themselves to de- 
grading habits. 

This brings us to another point of great 
moment. It will be denied by but few — and 
by none maintaining the natural equality of the 
races — that the Free colored people of the United 
States are sufficiently enlightened, to be elevated, 
by education, as readily as the whites of similar 



152 COTTON IS KING. 

ages, where equal restraints from vice, and en- 
couragements to virtue prevail. A large por- 
tion, even, of tlie slave population, are similarly 
enlightened. ^■•'' We speak not of the state of 
their morals. 

Why is it, then, that the efforts to elevate the 
Free colored people, have been so unsuccessful ? 
Before answering this question, it is necessary 
to call attention to the fact, that Abolitionists 
seem to be sadly disappointed in their expecta- 
tions, as to the progress of the free colored 

^ As many, at tlie North, are not aware of the extent to 
which the religious training of the slaves at the South pre- 
vails, we append the following paragraph, in relation to the 
doings of one denomination, alone, in South Carolina. 
Similar efforts, more or less extensive, have been made in 
the other States. 

" Religious Instruction of Slaves, — The South Carolina Methodist 
Conference have a missionary committee devoted entirely to promot- 
ing the religious instraction of the slave population, which has been 
in existence twenty-six years. The report of the last year shows a 
greater degree of activity than is generally known. They have 
twenty-six missionary stations in which thirty-two missionaries are 
employed. The report affirms that public opinion in South Carolina is 
decidedly in favor of the religious instruction of slaves, and that it has 
become far more general and systematic than formerly. It also claims 
a great degree of success to have attended the labors of the mission- 
aries." — X. T. Evangelist. 



COTTON IS KING. 153 

people. Tlieir vexation at tlie stubbornness of the 
Negroes, and the consequent failure of their 
measures, is very clearly manifested in the 
complaining language, used by Gerritt Smith, 
toward the colored people of the eastern cities, 
as well as by the contempt expressed by the 
American Missionary/ Association, for the colored 
preachers of Canada. They had found an apol- 
ogy, for their want of success in the United 
States, in the presence and influence of Coloni- 
zationists ; but no such excuse can be made for 
their want of success in Canada and the West 
Indies. Having failed in their anticipations, 
now they would fain shelter themselves under 
the pretense, that a people once subjected to 
slavery, even when liberated, can not be elevated 
in a single generation ; that the case of adults, 
raised in bondage, like heathen of similar age, 
is hopeless, and their children, only, can make 
such progress as will repay the missionary for 
his toil. But they will not be allowed to escape 
the censure due to their want of discrimination 
and foresight, by any such plea ; as the success 

of the Eepublic of Liberia, conducted from in- 
13 



154 COTTON IS KING. 

fancy to independence, almost wholly by lib- 
erated slaves, and tliose who were born and 
raised in the midst of Slavery, attests the falsity 
of their assumption. 

But to return. Why have the efforts for the 
elevation of the free colored people, not been 
more successful ? On this point our remarks 
may be limited to our own free colored people. 
The barrier to their progress here, exists not in 
their want of capacity, but in the absence of the 
incitements to virtuous action, which are con- 
stantly stimulating the white man to press 
onward and upward in the formation of character 
and the acquisition of knowledge. There is no 
position in church or state, to which the poorest 
white boy, in the common school, may not aspire. 

There is no post of honor, in the gift of his 
country, that is legally beyond his reach. But 
such encouragements to noble effort, do not 
reach the colored man, and he remains with us 
a depressed and disheartened being. Persuad- 
ing him to remain in this hopeless condition, 
has been the great error of the Abolitionists. 
They overlooked the teachings of history, that 



COTTON IS KING. " 155 

two races, differing so widely as to prevent 
tlieir amalgamation by marriage, can never 
live together, in the same community, but as 
superiors and inferiors — the inferior remain- 
ing subordinate to the superior. The encour- 
aging hopes held out to the colored people, that 
this law would be inoperative upon them, has led 
only to disappointment. Happily, this delusion 
is nearly at an end ; and they are beginning to 
act on their own judgments. They find them- 
selves so scattered and peeled, that there is not 
another half million of men in the world, so 
enlightened, who are accomplishing so little for 
their social and moral advancement. They 
perceive that they are nothing but branches, 
wrenched from the great African banyan, not 
yet planted in genial soil, and affording neither 
shelter nor food to the beasts of the forest or 
the fowls of the air — their roots unfixed in the 
earth, and their tender shoots withering as they 
hang pendent from their boughs. 

But little progress, then, it will be seen, has 
been made, by the free colored people, toward 
an approximation of equality with the whites. 



156 COTTON IS KING. 

Have they succeeded better in aiding to abolish 
Slavery ? This question has i-eceived its answer 
in the history of the triumph of Slavery. It 
is an important one, as this was a principal 
object influencing them to remain in the coun- 
try. Their agency in the attempts made to 
abolish the institution having failed, a more 
important question arises, as to whether the 
free colored people, by refusing to emigrate, 
may not have contributed to the advancement 
of slavery? An affirmative answer must be 
given to this inquiry. Nor is a protracted dis- 
cussion necessary to prove the assertion. 

One of the objections urged with the greatest 
force against Colonization, is, its tendency, as 
is alleged, to increase the value of slaves by 
diminishing their numbers. ^^Jay^s Inquiry, ^^ 
1835, presents this objection at length ; and 
the Eeport of the " Anti- Slavery Society, of 
Canada!^ 1853, sums it up in a single proposi- 
tion, thus : 

" The first effect of beo^innina; to reduce the 
number of slaves, by colonization, would be to 
increase the market value of those left behind, 



COTTON IS KING. 157 

and thereby increase tlie difficulty of setting 
tliem free." 

The practical effect of this doctrine, is to dis- 
courage all emancipations ; to render eternal 
the bondage of each individual slave, unless all 
can be liberated ; to prevent the benevolence of 
one master from freeing his slaves, lest his 
more selfish neighbor should be thereby en- 
riched; and to leave the whole system intact, 
until its total abolition can be effected. Such 
philanthropy would leave every individual, of 
suffering millions, to groan out a miserable 
existence, because it could not at once effect the 
deliverance of the whole. This objection to 
Colonization can be founded only in prejudice, 
or is designed to mislead the ignorant. The 
advocates of this doctrine do not practice it, or 
they would not promote the escape of fugitives 
to Canada. 

But Abolitionists object not only to the Colo- 
nization of liberated slaves, as tending to per- 
petuate Slavery ; they are equally hostile to the 
Colonization of the Free colored people, for the 
same reason. The '^ American Reform Tract 



158 COTTON IS KING. 

and Book Society, ^^ the organ of tlie Abolitionists, 
for the publication of Anti-Slavery works, has 
issued a Tract on " Colonization,^' in which this 
objection is stated as follows : 

"The Society perpetuates Slavery, by remov- 
ing the free laborer, and thereby increasing the 
demand for, and the value of, Slave labor." 

The projectors and advocates of such views 
may be good philanthropists, but they are bad 
philosophers. We have seen that the power of 
American Slavery, lies in the demand for its 
products ; and that the whole country, north of 
the sugar and cotton States, is actively employed 
in the production of provisions for the support 
of the planter and his slaves, and in consuming 
the products of Slave labor. This is the con- 
stant vocation of the whites. And how is it with 
the blacks? Are they competing with the 
slaves, in the cultivation of sugar and cotton, or 
are they also supporting the system, by con- 
suming its products? The latitudes in which 
they reside, and the pursuits in which they are 
engaged, will answer this question. 

The census of 1850, shows but 40,900 free 



COTTON IS KING. 159 

colored persons in the nine sugar and cotton 
States, including Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, 
Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Flori- 
da, and South Carolina, while 303,500 are living 
in the other States. North Carolina is omitted, 
because it is more of a tobacco and wool-growing, 
than cotton-producing State. Of the free colored 
persons in the first-named States, 19,260 are 
in the cities and larger towns ; while, of the 
remainder, a considerable number may be in 
the villages, or in the families of the whites. 
From these facts it is apparent, that less than 
20,000 of the entire Free colored population 
(omitting those of North Carolina), 'are in a 
position to compete with Slave labor, while all 
the remainder, numbering over 412,800, are 
engaged, either directly or indirectly, in sup- 
porting the institution. Even the fugitives 
escaping to Canada, from having been producers 
necessarily become consumers of Slave-grown 
products ; and, worse still, under the reciprocity 
treaty, they must also become growers of pro- 
visions for the planters who continue to hold their 
brothers, sisters, wives and children, in bondage. 



160 COTTON IS KING. 

These are the practical results of the policy 
of the Abolitionists. Verily, they, also, have 
dug their ditches on the wrong side of their 
breastworks, and afforded the enemy an easy 
entrance into their fortress. But, '' Let them 
alone ; they be blind leaders of the blind. And 
if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into 
the ditch.''- 

But a brighter day is dawning for the Free 
colored people. They are wearied in watching 
for the "better time coming," promised by their 
white friends, and are unwilling to " wait a 
little longer," as runs one of their songs of 
inaction. To collect their scattered fragments ; 
to consolidate their divided forces ; to sink their 
individual popularity into an honored nation- 
ality, is now the aim of their thoughtful men. 

But where is this great achievement to be 
made ? Not in the organization of a new gov- 
ernment, as no part of the earth remains unoc- 
cupied. It must be by a fusion with one already 
established. But what one ? Not with one like 
the British Colonies, in subjection to a distant 
'■'Matthew's Gospel, xv, 14 



COTTON IS KING. 161 

throne, and nearly destitute of schools and all 
the means of intellectual and moral improve- 
ment. It must be with one possessing the ele- 
ments of progress — which offers peace, security, 
prosperity, liberty, equality, fraternity, and 
Protestant Christianity. No other will meet 
their wants ; nor should any other be adopted, 
as worthy colored freemen, who have caught the 
spirit of the republican institutions of the United 
States. South America can afford no suitable 
asylum, as the diversity of language, and the 
antagonism of its religion, together with the 
frequency of its civil wars, and the insecurity of 
property and life, forbid their choosing a home 
in that region. 

Thus, Liberia is the only nation with which a 
fusion, by the free colored people, can be safely 
made. While remaining here, they must con- 
tinue to support Slavery, and suffer from inade- 
quate means of improvement. The only portion 
of their number, who have escaped from all con- 
nection with Slavery, are those who have removed 
to Liberia. In that Eepublic, too, all the neces- 
sary stimulants to civil, social, intellectual, and 



162 COTTON IS KING. 

moral advancement, are witliin tlie reach of the 
colored man. Nor are they left to the contin- 
gencies of the varying prosperity or adversity of 
the colonists, for their perpetuation. The four 
great leading Churches in the United States — 
the Episcopal, the Methodist, the Preshyterian, 
and the Baptist — are pledged to the support of 
its educational and religious institutions ; and 
hence, while generations will certainly he needed 
for the elevation of the Free colored people here, 
strive as they may, a single one, with right- 
hearted men, can do the work there. 

4. The moral relations of persons holding the 
^er se doctrine, on the suhject of Slavery, to 
the purchase and consumption of Slave-lahor 
products. 

Having noticed the political and economical 
relations of Slavery, it may be expected that we 
shall say something of its moral relations. In 
attempting this, we choose not to traverse that 
interminable labyrinth, without a thread, Avhich 
includes the moral character of the system, as 
it respects the relation hetiveen the master and his 
slave. Such questions are left for those who 



COTTON IS KING. 163 

believe tliemselves skilled in resolving cases of 
conscience, or framing terms of Cliurcli com- 
munion. The only aspect in which we care to 
consider it, is in the moral relations which the 
consumers of Slave-labor products sustain to 
Slavery — and even on this v^^e shall offer no 
opinion, our aim being only to promote inquiry. 
This view of the question is not an unimport- 
ant one. It includes the germ of the grand 
error in nearly all Anti-Slavery effort ; and to 
which, chiefly, is to be attributed its want of 
moral power over the conscience of the Slave- 
holder. The recent Abolition movement, was 
designed to create a public sentiment, in the 
United States, that should be equally as potent 
in forcing emancipation, as was the public opin- 
ion of Great Britain. But why have not the 
Americans been as successful as the English? 
This is an inquiry of great importance. When 
the Anti-Slavery Convention, which met, De- 
cember 6, 1833, in Philadelphia, declared, as a 
part of its creed : " That there is no differ- 
ence in principle, between the African Slave 
Trade, and American Slavery," it meant to be 



164 COTTON IS KING. 

understood as teaching, that persons who pur- 
chased slaves imported from Africa, or who held 
their offspriug as slaves, wore ixirticeps eriminis, 
partakers in the crime, with the Slave-trader, on 
the principle that he who receives stolen pro- 
perty, knowing it to he such, is equally guilty 
with the thief. 

On this point Daniel O'Connell was very 
explicit, when, in a puhlic assemhly, he used 
this language : " AYhen an American comes into 
Society, he will he asked, ' are you one of the 
thieves, or are you an honest man ? If you are 
an honest man, then you have given liherty to 
your slaves ; if you are among the thieves, the 
sooner you take the outside of the house, the 
hotter.' " 

The error just referred to was this : they 
hased their opposition to Slavery on the prin- 
ciple, that it w^as malum in se, a sin in itself, 
like the Slave trade, rohhery, and murder ; and, 
at the same time, continued to use the products 
of the lahor of the slave as though they had 
heen ohtained from the lahor of freemen. But 
this seeming inconsistency, was not the only 



COTTON IS KING. 165 

reason wliy they failed to create such a public 
sentiment, as would procure the emancipation of 
our slaves. The English Emancipationists be- 
gan their work like philosophers — addressing 
themselves respectfully, to the power that could 
grant their requests. Beside the moral argu- 
ment, which declared Slavery a crime, the 
English philanthropists labored to convince Par- 
liament, that emancipation would be advan- 
tageous to the commerce of the nation. The 
commercial value of the Islands had been re- 
duced one-third, as a result of the Abolition of 
the Slave trade. Emancipation, it was argued, 
would more than restore their former prosperity, 
as the labor of freemen was twice as productive 
as that of slaves. But American Abolitionists 
commenced their crusade against Slavery, by 
charging those who sustained it, and who alone, 
held the power to manumit, with crimes of the 
blackest die. This placed the parties in instant 
antagonism, causing all the arguments on 
human rights, and the sinfulness of Slavery, to 
fall without effect upon the ears of angry men. 
The error on this point, consisted in failing to 



166 COTTON IS KING. 

discriminate between the sources of the power 
over emancipation in England and in the United 
States. With Great Britain, the power was in 
Parliament. The masters, in the West Indies, 
had no voice in the question. It was the voters 
in England alone who controlled the elections, 
and, consequently, controlled Parliament. But 
the condition of things in the United States is 
the reverse of what it was in England. With 
us, the power of emancipation is in the States, 
not in Congress. The Slaveholders elect the 
members to the State Legislatures ; and they 
choose none but such as agree with them in 
opinion. It matters not, therefore, what public 
sentiment may be at the North, as it has no 
power over the Legislatures of the South. Here, 
then, is the difference : with us the Slaveholder 
controls the question of emancipation — in Eng- 
land the consent of the master was not necessary 
to the execution of that work. 

Our Anti-Slavery men seem to have fallen 
into their errors of policy, by following the lead 
of those of England, who manifested a total 
ignorance of the relations existing between our 



COTTON IS KING. 167 

General Government and that of the States. On 
the Abolition platform, Slaveholders found them- 
selves placed in the same category with Slave- 
traders and thieves. They were told, that all 
laws giving them power over the slave, were 
void, in the sight of Heaven ; and that their 
appropriation of the fruits of the labor of the 
slave, was robbery. Had the preaching of these 
principles produced conviction, it must have 
promoted emancipation. But, unfortunately, 
while these doctrines were held up to the gaze 
of Slaveholders, in the one hand of the ex- 
horter, they beheld his other hand stretched out, 
from beneath his cloak of seeming sanctity, to 
clutch the products of the very robbery he was 
professing to condemn ! Take a fact in proof 
of this view of the subject. 

At the date of the declarations of Daniel 
O'CoNNELL, on behalf of the English, and by 
the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Convention, on 
the part of Americans, the British Manufactu- 
rers were purchasing, annually, about 300,000,- 
000 lbs. of cotton, from the very men denounced 
as equally criminal with Slave-traders and 



168 COTTON IS KING. 

thieves ; and the people of the United States 
were almost wholly dependent upon Slave labor 
for their supplies of cottons and groceries. It is 
no matter for wonder, therefore, that Slavehold- 
ers should treat, as fiction, the doctrine that 
Slave-labor products are the fruits of robbery, 
so long as they are purchased, without scruple, 
by all classes of men, in Europe and America. 
The pecuniary argument for emancipation, that 
Free labor is more profitable than Slave labor, 
was also urged here; but was treated as the 
greatest absurdity. The masters had before 
their eyes, the evidence of the falsity of the as- 
sertion, that, if emancipated, the Slaves would 
be doubly profitable as free laborers. The re- 
verse was admitted, on all hands, to be true iu 
relation to our colored people. 

But this question, of the moral relations 
which the consumers of slave-labor products 
sustain to Slavery, is one of too important a 
nature to be passed over without a closer exam- 
ination ; and, beside, it is involved in less obscu- 
rity than the morality of the relation existing 
between the master and the slave. Its consider- 



COTTON IS KING. 169 

ation, too, affords an opportunity of discrimina- 
ting bet^yeen tlie different opinions entertained 
on the broad question of the morality of the 
institution, and enables us to judge of the con- 
sistency and consciousness of every man, by the 
standard which he himself adopts. 

The prevalent opinions, as to the morality of 
the Institution of Slavery, in the United States, 
may be classified under three heads. 1. That 
it is justified by Scripture example and precept. 

2. That it is a great civil and social evil, result- 
ing from ignorance and degradation, like despotic 
systems of Government, and may be tolerated 
until its subjects are sufficiently enlightened 
to render it safe to grant them equal rights. 

3. That it is malum in se, a sin in itself, like 
robbery and murder, and cannot be sustained, 
for a moment, without sin ; and, like sin, should 
be immediately abandoned. 

Those who consider Slavery sanctioned by the 
Bible, conceive that they can, consistently with 
their creed, not only hold slaves, and use the 
products of slave labor, without doing vio- 
lence to their consciences, but may adopt 
1.4 



170 COTTON IS KING. 

measures to perpetuate the system. Those who 
consider Slavery merely a great civil and social 
evil, a despotism that may engender oppression, 
or may not, are of opinion that they may pur- 
chase and use its products, or interchange their 
own for those of the Slaveholder, as free Govern- 
ments hold commercial and diplomatic inter- 
course with despotic ones, without being respon- 
sible for the moral evils connected with the 
system. But the position of those who believe 
Slavery malum in se, like the slave trade, robbery 
and murder, is a very different one from either 
of the other classes, as it regards the purchase 
and use of Slave-labor products. Let us illus- 
trate this by a case in point: 

A company of men hold a number of their 
fellow-men in bondage, under the laws of the 
commonwealth in which they live, so that they 
can compel them to work their plantations, and 
raise horses, cattle, hogs, and cotton. These 
products of the labor of the oppressed, are appro- 
priated by the oppressors to their own use, and 
taken into the markets for sale. Another com- 
pany proceed to a community of freemen, who 



COTTON IS KING. 171 

have labored voluntarily during the year, seize 
their persons, bind them, convey away their 
horses, cattle, hogs, and cotton, and take the 
property to market. The first association repre- 
sents the Slaveholders ; the second a band of 
robbers. The commodities of both parties, are 
openly offered for sale, and every one knows how 
the property of each was obtained. Those who 
believe the per se doctrine, place both these asso- 
ciations in the same moral category, and call 
them robbers. Judged by this rule, the first 
band are the more criminal, as they have de- 
prived their victims of personal liberty, forced 
them into servitude, and then taken from them, 
without pay, the proceeds of their labor. The 
second band have only deprived their victims 
of liberty, while they robbed them ; and thus 
have committed but two crimes, while the first 
have perpetrated three. These parties attempt 
to negotiate the sale of their cotton, say in Lon- 
don. The first company dispose of their cargo 
without difficulty — no one manifesting the 
slightest scruple at purchasing the products of 
Slave-labor. But the second company are not so 



172 COTTON IS KING. 

fortunate. As soon as their true character is 
ascertained, the police drag its members to Court, 
where they are sentenced to Bride^yell. In vain 
do these robbers quote the Philadelphia Anti- 
Slavery Convention, and Daniel O'Connell, to 
prove that their cotton was obtained by means 
no more criminal than that of the Slaveholders, 
and that, therefore, judgment ought to be re- 
versed. The Court will not entertain such a 
plea, and they have to endure the penalty of the 
law. Now, why this difference, if Slavery be 
malum in se? And if the receiver of stolen 
property is iJarticeps criminis with the thief, why 
is it, that the Englishman, who should receive 
and sell the cotton of the robbers, would run 
the risk of being sent to prison with them, while 
if he acted as agent of the Slaveholders, he 
would be treated as an honorable man ? If the 
master has no moral right to hold his slaves, in 
what respect can the products of their labor 
differ from the property acquired by robbery ? 
And if the property be the fruits of robbery, 
how can any one use it, without violating con- 
science ? 



COTTON IS KING. 173 

We have met witli tlie following sage exposi- 
tion of the question, in justification of the use 
of Slave-labor products, by those who believe 
the per se doctrine : The master owns the lands, 
gives his skill and intelligence to direct the 
labor, and feeds and clothes the slaves. The 
slaves, therefore, are entitled only to a part of 
the proceeds of their labor, while the master is 
also justly entitled to a part of the crop. When 
brought into market, the purchaser can not 
know what part belongs, rightfully, to the mas- 
ter and what to his slaves, as the whole is 
offered in bulk. He may, therefore, purchase 
the whole, innocently, and throw the sinfulness 
of the transaction upon the master, who sells 
what belongs to others. But if the per se 
doctrine be true, this apology for the purchaser, 
is not a justification. Where a " confusion of 
goods '^ has been made by one of the owners, 
so that they cannot be separated, he who " con- 
fused '' them can have no advantage, in law, 
from his own wrong, but the goods are awarded 
to the innocent party. On this well known 
principle of law, this most equitable rule, the 



174 COTTON IS KING. 

master forfeits his right in the property, and 
the purchaser, knowing the facts, becomes a 
party in his guilt. But aside from this, the 
" confusion of goods," by the master, can give 
him no moral right to dispose of the interest of 
his slaves therein for his own benefit ; and the 
persons purchasing such property, acquire no 
moral right to its possession and use. These 
are sound, logical views. The argument ofiered, 
in justification of those who hold that Slavery 
is malum in se, is the strongest that can be 
made. It is apparent, then, from a fair analysis 
of their own principles, that they are loarticeps 
criminis with Slaveholders. 

Again, if the laws regulating the institution 
of Slavery, be morally null and void, and not 
binding on the conscience, then, the slaves have 
a moral right to the proceeds of their labor. 
This right can not be alienated by any act 
of the master, but attaches to the property 
wherever it may be taken, and to whomsoever 
it may be sold. This principle, in law, is also 
w.'>ll established. The recent decision on the 
" Gardiner fraud," confirms . it ; the Court 



COTTON IS KING. 175 

asserting, tliat the money paid out of tlie Treas- 
ury of the United States, under such circum- 
stances, continued its character as the money 
and property of the United States, and may bo 
followed into the hands of those who cashed the 
orders of Gardiner, and subsequently drew the 
money, but who are not the true owners of the 
said fund ; and decreeing that the amount of 
funds, thus obtained, be collected off the estate 
of said Gardiner, and off those who drew funds 
from the Treasury, on his orders. 

These principles of law are so well under- 
stood, by every man of intelligence, that we can 
not conceive how those advocating the per se doc- 
trines, if sincere, can continue in the constant 
use of Slave-grown products, without a perpetual 
violation of conscience and of all moral law. 
Taking them under protest, against the Slavery 
which produced them, is ridiculous. Eefusing 
to fellowship the Slaveholer, Avhile eagerly appro- 
priating the products of the labor of the slave, 
which he brings in his hand, is contemptible. 
The most noted case of the kind, is that of the 
British Committee, who had char2:e of the 



176 COTTON IS KING. 

preliminary arrangements for the admission of 
members to tlie World's Christian Evangel- 
ical Alliance. One of the rules it adopted, 
hut which the Alliance afterward modified, ex- 
cluded all American clergymen, suspected of a 
want of orthodoxy on the per 8e doctrine, from 
seats in that body. Their language, to Amer- 
ican clergymen, was virtually, '' Stand aside, I 
am holier than thou ; while, at the same moment 
their parishioners, the manufacturers, had about 
completed the purchase of 624,000,000 lbs. of 
cotton, for the consumption of their mills, during 
the year; the bales of which, piled together, 
would have reached mountain-high, displaying 
mostly the brands, " New Orleans,'^ "Mobile," 
" Charleston.'^ 

As not a word was said, by the Committee, 
against the Englishmen who were buying and 
manufacturing American cotton — the case may 
be viewed as one in which the fruits of robbery 
were taken under protest against the robbers 
themselves. To all intelligent men, the con- 
duct of the people of Britain, in protesting 
against Slavery, as a system of robbery, while 



COTTON IS KING. 177 

continuing to purchase such enormous quantities 
of the cotton produced by slaves, appears as 
Pharisaical as the conduct of the conscientious 
Scotchman, in early times, in Eastern Pennsyl- 
vania, who married his wife under protest 
against the Constitution and laws of the Gov- 
ernment, and, especially, against the authority, 
power, and right of the magistrate who had just 
tied the knot."-' 

" An anecdote, illustrative of the pliability of some con- 
sciences, of this apparently rigid class, where interest or 
inclination demands it, has often been told by the late Gov- 
ernor Morrow, of Ohio. An old Scotch " Cameronian," in 
Eastern Pennsylvania, became a widower, shortly after the 
adoption of the Constitution of the United States. He 
refused to acknowledge either the National or State Gov- 
ernments, but pronounced them both unlawful, unright- 
eous, and ungodly. Soon he began to feel the want of a 
wife, to care for his motherless children. The consent of a 
woman in his own church was gained, because to take any 
other would have been like an Israelite marrying a daugh- 
ter of the land of Canaan. On this point, as in refusing 
to swear allegiance to Government, he was controlled by 
conscience. But now a practical difficulty presented itself. 
There was no minister of his church in the country — and 
those of other denominations, in his judgment, had no Di- 
vine warrant for exercising the functions of the sacred 

15 



178 COTTON IS KING. 

Such pliable consciences, doubtless, are very- 
convenient in cases of emergency. But as tlicy 
relax wlien selfisb ends are to be subserved, and 

office. He repudiated the whole of them. But how to get 
married, that was the problem. Ho tried to persuade his 
intended to agree to a marriage contract, before witnesses, 
which could be confirmed whenever a proper minister 
should arrive from Scotland. But his " lady-love" would 
not consent to the plan. She must be married " like other 
folk," or not at all — because " people would talk so." The 
Scotchman for want of a wife, like Great Britain for want 
of cotton, saw very plainly that his children must suffer ; 
and so he resolved to get married, at all hazards, as Eng- 
land buys her cotton, but so as not to violate conscience. 
Proceeding, with his intended, to a magistrate's office, the 
ceremony was soon performed, and they twain pronounced 
*' one flesh." But no sooner had he " kissed the bride," the 
sealing act of the contract at that day, than the good 
Cameronian drew a written document from his pocket, 
which he read aloud, before the officer and witnesses ; and 
in which he entered his solemn protest against the author- 
ity of the Government of the United States, against that of 
the State of Pennsylvania, and especially against the poAver, 
right, and lawfulness of the acts of the magistrate, who 
had just married him. This done, he went his way, rejoic- 
ing that he had secured a wife without recognizing the 
lawfulness of ungodly Governments, or violating his con- 
science. 



COTTON IS KING. 179 

retain their rigidity only when judging the con- 
duct of others, the inference is, that the persons 
possessing them are either hypocritical, or else, 
as was acknowledged hy Parson D., in similar 
circumstances, they have mistaken their preju- 
dices for their consciences. 

So far as Britain is concerned, she is, mani- 
festly, much more willing to receive American 
Slave-lahor cotton for her factories, than Amer- 
ican republican principles for her people. And 
why so ? The profits derived by her, from the 
purchase and manufacture of Slave-labor cotton, 
constitute so large a portion of the means of her 
prosperity, that the government could not sus- 
tain itself were the supplies of this article cut 
off. It is easy to divine, therefore, why the 
people of England are boundless in their denun- 
ciations of American Slavery, while not a single 
remonstrance goes up to the throne, against the 
import of American cotton. Should she exclude 
it, the act would render her unable to pay the 
interest on her national debt ; and many a 
declaimer against Slavery, losing his income, 
would have to go supperless to bed. 



180 COTTON IS KING. 

Let us contrast the conduct of a pagan gov- 
ernment with that of Great Britain. When the 
Emperor of China became fully convinced of his 
inability to resist the prowess of the British 
arms, in the famous "Opium War/' efforts were 
made to induce him to legalize the traffic in 
opium, by levying a duty on its import, that 
should yield him a heavy profit. This he re- 
fused to do, and recorded his decision in these 
memorable words : 

"It is true I can not prevent the introduction 
of the flowing poison. Gain-seeking and corrupt 
men will, for profit and sensuality, defeat my 
wishes, but nothing will induce me to derive 
a revenue from the vice and misery of my 
people."^-" 

The reason can now be clearly comprehended, 
why Abolitionists have had so little moral power 
over the conscience of the Slaveholder. Their 
practice has been inconsistent with their pre- 
cepts ; or, at least, their conduct has been liable 
to this construction. Nor do we perceive how 
they can exert a more potent influence, in the 
*■* National Intelligencer, 1854. 



COTTON IS KING. 181 

future, unless their energies are directed to 
efforts sucli as will relieve them from a position 
so inconsistent witli tlieir professions, as that of 
constantly purchasing products which they, 
themselves, declare to be the fruits of robbery. 
While, therefore, things remain as they are, 
with the world so largely dependent upon Slave 
labor, how can it be otherwise, than that the sys- 
tem will continue to flourish? And while its pro- 
ducts are used by all classes, of every sentiment, 
and country, nearly, how can the Slaveholder 
be brought to see anything, in the practice of 
the world, to alarm his conscience, and make him 
cringe, before his fellow-men, as a guilty robber ? 
But, has nothing worse occurred from the ad- 
vocacy of the per se doctrine, than an exhibition 
of inconsistency on the part of Abolitionists, and 
the perpetuation of Slavery resulting from their 
conduct? This has occurred. Three highly 
respectable religious denominations, now limited 
to the North — the Associate Presbyterian 
Church, the Eeformed Presbyterian Church, 
and the Associate Eeformed Presbyterian 
Church — had once many flourishing congrega- 



182 COTTON IS KING. 

tions in the Soutli. On the adoption of the jper 
se doctrine, by their respective Synods, these 
congregations became disturbed, were soon after 
broken up, or the ministers in charge had to 
seek other fields of labor. Their system of re- 
ligious instruction, for the family, being quite 
thorough, the Slaves were deriving much ad- 
vantage from the influence of these bodies. But 
when they resolved to withhold the Gospel from 
the Master, unless he would emancipate, they 
also withdrew the means of grace from the 
Slave ; and, so far as they were concerned, left 
him to perish eternally ! Whether this course 
was proper, or whether it would have been bet- 
ter to have passed by the morality of the legal 
relation, in the creation of which the master 
had no agency, and considered him, under Prov- 
idence, as the moral guardian of the Slave, 
bound to discharge a guardian's duty to an im- 
mortal being, we shall not undertake to deter- 
mine. Attention is called to the facts, merely, to 
show the practical effects of the action of these 
Churches upon the Slave, and what the pei- se doc- 
trine has done in depriving him of the Gospel. 



COTTON IS KING. 183 

Anotlier remark, and we have done with this 
topic. Nothing is more common, in certain 
circles, than denunciations of the Christian men 
and ministers, who refuse to adopt the per se 
principle. We leave others to judge whether 
these censures are merited. One thing is cer- 
tain : those who believe that Slavery is a great 
civil and social evil, entailed upon the country, 
and are extending the Gospel to both Master 
and Slave, with the hope of removing it peace- 
fully, cannot be reproached with acting incon- 
sistently with their own principles ; while those 
who declare Slavery malum in se, and refuse to 
fellowship the Christian Slaveholder, but yet use 
the products of Slave-labor, may fairly be class- 
ified, on their principles, with the hypocritical 
people of Israel, who were thus reproached by 
the Most High : '' What hast thou to do to de- 
clare my statutes, or that thou shouldst take my 
covenant in thy mouth ? * * ^ When thou 
sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with 
him.''- 

=- Psalm 1, 16, 18. 



184 COTTON IS KING. 

CONCLUSION. 

In concluding our labors, there is little need 
of extended observation. The work of Emanci- 
pation, in our country, \yas checked, and the 
extension of Slavery promoted : — first, by the 
Free Colored People neglecting to improve the 
advantages afforded them ; second, by the in- 
creasing value imparted to Slave-labor ; third, 
by the mistaken policy into which the Abolition- 
ists have fallen. Whatever reasons mio-ht now 
be offered, for emancipation, from an improve- 
ment of our Free colored people, is far more 
than counterbalanced by its failure in the West 
Indies, and the constantly increasing value of 
the labor of the Slave. If, when the Planters 
had only a moiety of the markets for Cotton, 
the value of Slavery was such as to arrest eman- 
cipation, how must the obstacles be increased, 
now, when they have the monopoly of the mar- 
kets of the world? 

We propose not to speak of remedies for 
Slavery. That we leave ito others. Thus far 
this great civil and social evil, has baffled all 



COTTON IS KING. 185 

human wisdom. Either some radical defect 
must have existed, in the measures devised for 
its removal, or the time has not yet come for 
successfully assailing the Institution. Our 
work is completed, in the delineation we have 
given of its varied relations to our commercial 
and social interests. As the monopoly of the 
culture of Cotton, imparts to Slaver}^ its eco- 
nomical value, the system will continue as long 
as this monopoly is maintained. Slave-Lahor 
products have now hecome necessities of human 
life, to the extent of more than half the com- 
mercial articles supplied to the Christian world. 
Even Free labor, itself, is made largely subser- 
vient to Slavery, and vitally interested in its 
perpetuation and extension. 

Can this condition of things be changed ? It 
may be reasonably doubted, whether anything 
efficient can be speedily accomplished: not be- 
cause there is lack of territory where freemen 
may be employed in tropical cultivation ; not 
because intelligent free-labor is less productive 
than slave-labor; but because freemen, whose 
constitutions are adapted to tropical climates, 



186 COTTON IS KING. 

will not avail themselves of the opportunity 
offered for commencing such an enterprise. 

King Cotton cares not whether he employs 
slaves or freemen. It is the cotton, not the slaves, 
upon which his throne is based. Let freemen 
do his work as well, and he will not object to 
the change. Thus far the experiments in this 
respect have failed, and they will not soon be 
renewed. The efforts of his most powerful ally, 
Great Britain, to promote that object, have 
already cost her people many hundreds of mil- 
lions of dollars; with total failure as a reward 
for her zeal. One-sixth of the colored people of 
the United States are free ; hut tliey shun the 
cotton regions, and have been instructed to detest 
emigration to Liberia. Their improvement has 
not been such as was anticipated ; and their more 
rapid advancement cannot be expected, while 
they remain in the country. The free colored 
people of the West Indies, can no longer be 
relied on to furnish tropical products, for they 
are fast sinking into savage indolence. His 
Majesty, King Cotton, therefore, is forced to 
continue the employment of his slaves ; and, by 



COTTON IS KING. 187 

their toil, is riding on, conquering and to con- 
quer ! He receives no check from the cries of 
the oppressed, while the citizens of the world 
are dragging forward his chariot, and shouting 
aloud his praise ! 

Kma Cotton is a profound statesman, and 
knows what measures will best sustain his throne. 
He is an acute mental philosopher, acquainted 
with the secret springs of human action, and 
accurately perceives who will best promote his 
aims. He has no evidence that colored men can 
grow his cotton, but in the capacity of slaves. 
It is his policy, therefore, to defeat all schemes 
of emancipation. To do this, he stirs up such 
agitations as lure his enemies into measures 
that will do him no injury. The venal politician 
is always at his call, and assumes the form of 
saint or sinner, as the service may demand. 
Nor does he overlook the enthusiast, engaged in 
Quixotic endeavors for the relief of suffering 
humanity, but influences him to advocate meas- 
ures which tend to tighten, instead of loosing 
the bands of Slavery. Or, if he cannot be se- 
duced into the support of such schemes, he is 



188 COTTON IS KING. 

beguiled into efforts that waste his strength on 
objects the most impracticable — so that Slavery 
receives no damage from the exuberance of his 
philanthropy. But should such a one, perceiv- 
ing the futility of his labors, and the evils of 
his course, make an attempt to avert the conse- 
quences ; while he is doing this, some new recruit, 
pushed forward into his former place, charges 
him with lukewarmness, or Pro-slavery senti- 
ments, destroys his influence with the public, 
keeps alive the delusions, and sustains the su- 
premacy of King Cotton in the world. 

In speaking of the economical connections of 
Slavery with the other material interests of the 
world, we have called it a tri-partite alliance. It 
is more than this. It is quadruple. Its struc- 
ture includes four parties, arranged thus: The 
Western Agriculturists ; the Southern Planters ; 
the English Manufacturers ; and the American 
Abolitionists ! By this arrangement, the Abo- 
litionists do not stand in direct contact with 
Slavery: — they imagine, therefore, that they 
have clean hands and pure hearts, so far as sus- 
taining the system is concerned But they, no 



COTTON IS KING. 189 

less than their allies, aid in promoting the in- 
terests of Slavery. Their sympathies are with 
England on the Slavery question, and they very 
naturally incline to agree with her on other 
points. She advocates Free Trade, as essential 
to her manufactures and commerce ; and they do 
the same, not waiting to inquire into its hear- 
ings upon American Slavery. We refer now to 
the people, not to their leaders, whose integrity 
we choose not to indorse. The Free Trade and 
Protective Systems, in their bearings upon 
Slavery, are so well understood, that no man of 
general reading, especially an editor, who pro- 
fesses Anti-Slavery sentiments, at the same time 
advocating Free Trade, will ever convince men 
of intelligence, pretend what he may, that he is 
not either woefully perverted in his judgment, 
or emphatically, a '' dough-face " in disguise ! 
England, we were about to say, is in alliance 
with the cotton planter, to whose prosperity Free 
Trade is indispensable. Abolitionism is in alli- 
ance witli England. All three of these parties, 
then, agree in their support of the Free Trade 
policy. It needed but the aid of the Western 



190 COTTON IS KING. 

Farmer, therefore, to give permanency to this 
principle. His adhesion has heen given, the 
quadruple alliance has been perfected, and 
Slavery and Free Trade nationalized! 

The crisis now upon the country, as a conse- 
quence of Slavery having become dominant, 
demands that the highest wisdom should be 
brought to the management of national affairs. 
The quacks who have aided in producing the 
malady, and who have the effrontery still to 
claim the right to manage the case, must be 
dismissed. The men who mock at the Political 
Economy of the North, and have assisted in 
crushing its cherished policy, must be rebuked. 
Slavery, nationalized, can now be managed only as 
a national concern. It can now be abolished only 
with the consent of those who sustain it. Their 
assent can be gained only on employing other 
agents to meet the wants it now supplies. It 
must be superseded, then, if at all, by means 
that will not injuriously affect the interests of 
commerce and agriculture, to which it is now so 
important an auxiliary. To supply the demand 
for tropical products, except by the present mode, 



COTTON IS KING. 191 

is not the work of a day, nor of a generation. 
Should the influx of foreigners continue, such a 
change may be possible. But to eftect the 
transition from Slavery to Freedom, on princi- 
ples that will be acceptable to the parties who 
control the question; to devise and successfully 
sustain such measures as will produce this result ; 
must be left to statesmen of broader views and 
loftier conceptions than are to be found among 
those at present engaged in this great contro- 
versy. 

In noticing the strategy by which the Aboli- 
tionists were rendered subservient to Slavery, 
through the ignorance or duplicity of their lead- 
ers, we refer to the political action, only, in 
which they were induced to participate. We 
yield to none in our veneration for the early 
Anti-Slavery men, whose zeal for the overthrow 
of oppression, and the relief of the country from 
its greatest curse, was kindled at the altar of a 
pure philanthropy ; and to whom official honors 
and emoluments had few attractions. We intend 
not to disparage such. men. 

Those who believe that Slavery is a divine 



192 COTTON IS KING. 

institution, whicli should be perpetuated ; as well 
as those who hold the sentiment, that it is a 
malum in se, that must be instantly abandoned ; 
entertain views so much at variance with the prac- 
tical judgment of the world, that they can never 
hope to see their principles become dominant. 
The doctrine of the divine right of Slavery, is as 
repugnant to the spirit of the age, as that of 
the divine right of kings, or of popes. The per se 
doctrine, more plausible at first view, is every- 
where practically repudiated, in the business 
transactions of the world; and involves those 
who profess it, not only in every-day inconsis- 
tencies, but bars their access to the master and 
dooms the slave to perpetual ignorance. 

These two extreme views can not become prev- 
alent ; but must remain circumscribed within the 
narrow limits to which they have been hitherto 
confined. It is well for the country that it is so. 
These parties are so antagonistic, that their 
policy has harmonized in nothing but the tri- 
umph of Slavery, and the increase of the dangers 
of a dissolution of the Union. 

The view, that Slavery is a great civil and 



COTTON IS KING. 193 

social evil, identical in ])rinciple with despotism, is 
beset witli fewer difficulties, meets with less 
opposition, and is likely to become the preva- 
lent belief of the world. This view maintains, 
that Slavery is an incubus, pressing on humanity, 
like despotism in any other form ; and sinful, only, 
so far as it abuses its power. This liability to 
abuse, it is admitted, is increased under Ameri- 
can Slavery, from the fact, that while a single 
despot often governs many millions of subjects, 
with us, three hundred and fifty thousand mas- 
ters rule over but three millions two hundred 
and fifty thousand slaves : subjecting them, not 
to uniform laws, but to an endless diversity of 
treatment, as benevolence or cupidity may 
dictate. 

How far masters in general escape the com- 
mission of sin, in the treatment of their slaves, 
or whether any are free from guilt, is not the 
point at issue, in this view of Slavery. The 
mere possession of power over the slave, under 
the sanction of law, is held not to be sinful ; but, 
like despotism, may be used for the good of the 

governed. Here arises a question of importance : 
16 



194 COTTON IS KING. 

Can despotism be acknowledged, by Christians, 
as a lawful form of government ? Those who 
hold the view of slavery under consideration, 
answer in the affirmative. The necessity of civil 
government, they say, is denied by none. So- 
ciety can not exist in its absence. Eepublicanism 
can be sustained only where the majority are 
intelligent and moral. In no other condition 
can free government be maintained. Hence, 
despotism establishes itself, of necessity, more or 
less absolutely, over an ignorant or depraved 
people ; obtaining the acquiescence of the enlight- 
ened, by offering them security to person and pro- 
perty. Few nations, indeed, possess moral eleva- 
tion sufficient to maintain republicanism. Many 
have tried it ; have failed, and relapsed into 
despotism. Eepublican nations, therefore, must 
either forego all intercourse with despotic gov- 
ernments, or acknowledge them to be lawful. 
This can be done, it is claimed, without being 
accountable for moral evils connected with their 
administration. Elevated examples of such re- 
cognitions are on record. Christ paid tribute to 
Caesar; and Paul admitted the validity of the 



COTTON IS KING. 195 

despotic government of Kome. with its thirty 
millions of slaves. To deny the lawfulness of 
despotism, and yet hold intercourse with such 
governments, is as inconsistent as to hold the 
per se doctrine, in regard to Slavery, and still 
continue to use its products. Slavery and des- 
potism being identical in principle, it follows, 
that the considerations which justify the recog- 
nition of the one, will apply equally to the other. 
Another thought, in this connection, crowds 
itself upon the attention, and demands a hearing. 
Despotism, though recognized as lawful, from 
necessity, is repugnant to enlightened and moral 
men. The notions of equity, everywhere pre- 
vailing, makes them revolt at the idea of des- 
potism continuing perpetually. But continue it 
will, in one form or another, until ignorance is 
banished, and the moral elevation of mankind 
effected. Hence it is, that Christian philanthro- 
pists, clearly comprehending the truth on this 
point, have labored, unremittingly, from the 
days of John Knox, the Scotch reformer, to the 
present moment, to promote education among 
the people, and thus prepare them for the 



196 COTTON IS KING. 

enjoyment of civil liberty. Every consideration, 
leading Christian men to labor to supersede des- 
potism by republicanism, demands, with equal 
force, that Slavery shall be superseded by Free- 
dom. There is an advantage gained, it is 
thought, in ranking Slavery and despotism as 
identical. It links the fate of the one with that 
of the other. None but fanatics, however, will 
attempt to reap before they sow. None who 
comprehend the causes of the failure of repub- 
licanism in France, and of emancipation in Hayti 
and Jamaica, will desire to witness a repetition 
of the tragedies there enacted. The benefits 
repaid not the treasure and the blood they cost. 
But these tragedies have taught a lesson easily 
comprehended. Moral elevation must precede 
the enjoyment of civil privileges. The advance 
in the former, must be the measure by which to 
regulate the grant of the latter ; otherwise the 
safety of society is endangered. Upon these 
principles most of the States have acted, in 
denying to the Free colored people an equality 
of political rights. It is a conviction of this 
truth, that now agitates the public mind, on the 



COTTON IS KING. 197 

question of limiting the political privileges of 
foreigners, who may hereafter ask the rights of 
citizenship ; and begets the hostility, among 
Americans, to excluding the Bible from Common 
Schools. But why so much zeal, it is asked, for 
the Bible in Common Schools ? In the language 
of another, we, in turn, would ask : 

" How comes it that that little volume, com- 
posed by humble men in a rude age, when art 
and science were but in their childhood, has 
exerted more influence on the human mind and 
on the social system, than all the other books 
put together ? Whence comes it that this book 
has achieved such marvelous changes in the 
opinions of mankind — has banished idol wor- 
ship — has abolished infanticide — has put down 
polygamy and divorce — exalted the condition 
of woman — raised the standard of public mo- 
rality — created for families that blessed thing, 
a Christian home — and produced its other tri- 
umphs by causing benevolent institutions, open 
and expansive, to spring up as with the wand of 
enchantment? What sort of a book is this, 
that even the winds and waves of human passion 



198 COTTON IS KING. 

obey it? What other engine of social im- 
provement has operated so long, and yet lost 
none of its virtues ? Since it appeared, many 
boasted plans of amelioration have been tried 
and failed, many codes of jurisprudence have 
arisen, and run their course, and expired. Em- 
pire after empire has been launched upon the 
tide of time, and gone down, leaving no trace 
upon the waters. But this book is still going 
about doing good, leaving with society its holy 
principles — cheering the sorrowful with its con- 
solation — strengthening the tempted — encour- 
aging the patient — calming the troubled spirit 
— and smoothing the pillow of death. Can 
such a book be the offspring of human genius ? 
Does not the vastness of its effects demonstrate 
the excellency of the power to be of God ? '^ 

The feeling of every true American, on this 
question, may be thus expressed : " Eather than 
have my offspring deprived of free access to the 
fountain of all true morality • — rather than see 
the children of my country deprived of the 
Bible — I would sacrifice all to prevent such a 
calamity. With the banishment of the Bible 



COTTON IS KING. 199 

from common-schools, farewell to republicanism — 
farewell to morality — farewell to religion V^ 

It is matter of rejoicing, to all wlio hold these 
sentiments, that the work of instruction, among 
the slaves, under the supervision of several of 
the laro;est reli^'ious denominations in the coun- 
try, is progressing, slowly, it may he, hut suc- 
cessfully. The Bible is among the slaves as well 
as the masters. The presence of the mission- 
ary, engaged in his labor of love, in the midst 
of the slave population, is an ample demonstra- 
tion, that the master recognizes his slave as an 
immortal being, with a soul to be saved or lost. 
With this work of instruction, increased and 
perpetuated, the slave will, one day, reach that 
point of moral elevation, when his bondage may 
be safely superseded by freedom. 

But what of the Free colored peo]3le ? Their 
condition and prospects are before the reader. 
Their agency in checking emancipation, when 
it was in successful progress, has become history. 
Their submission, voluntarily, to become '' hew- 
ers of wood and drawers of water,'^ is a melan- 
choly fact, visible to all. Whoever projects a 



200 COTTON IS KING. 

practicable scheme of abolition, that will again 
offer inducements to general emancipation, and 
hasten the redemption of the colored race, must 
include in his measures, as the first and radical 
principle, the elevation of those already free ! 
Accomplish this, and more than half the work 
is completed. The theater for such an achiev- 
ment is not the United States. It is Africa — 
Liberia ! Utopia is not the field — it must be 
abandoned. Christian men at the South, now 
hesitate to emancipate their slaves, and cast 
them, helpless, upon the frigid charities of the 
North ! But let Africa be once redeemed, let 
civilization and Christianity spread over a few 
millions of its population, and the moral effect 
would be irresistible. Every rational objection to 
emancipation would be at an end. Every Chris- 
tian master, as his slaves attained sufiicient 
moral elevation, would say to them, " Brothers, 
2:0 free I '' 



APPENDIX 



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111 
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•om — 

464,505 

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230,064 

928,425 

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479 lbs. 

Britain 

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. India, 

Lverage 

during 

300 lbs. 

om — 

155,600 

080,400 

604,000 

004,800 

om — 

800,000 
200,000 
022,432 
431,496 
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131 




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STATISTICS. 207 



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ERRATA. 

Page 36, 12th line from top, for "grapes of gall," rt\id, " their grapes 
are grapes of gall." 

Page 38, 12th line from top, for " fxplnining,'' read, " exclaiming y 
Page 68, 8th line from top, for "/or morf" read, " for no more." 



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